The company's capability to precisely measure land surface temperatures — using data from a wide variety or Earth monitoring satellites and a software suite for data fusion — has potential military and national security applications.
The five Strategic Commercial Enhancements (SCE) contracts will allow NRO to study imagery and techniques used by the companies, which include novel ways of processing images to increase their fidelity and resolution.
Balancing security and access to data are critical to providing users with trustworthy, reliable data for real-time decisions.
While the company currently is using already available data from satellites like NASA's Landsat and ESA's Sentinel-2, Hydrosat also intends to launch its own constellation of 16 microsats to low Earth orbit (LEO).
CEO Pieter Fossel explained how the temperature of the ground, for instance, can be a critical factor for helicopter-borne special operations missions.