Earlier this year, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced a new RFP highlighting the importance of high-quality satellite imagery and data analytics to their work. The agency, which attended Geo Week this year with an eye on attracting new talent onto their team, made the announcement for “Luno A,” a $290 million “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity [IDIQ] contract to acquire unclassified commercial GEOINT-derived computer vision and analytic service capabilities.” Multiple vendors will be part of this five-year IDIQ, and proposals are due later this month.
The aim of Luno A is to ensure the delivery of more data to analytics within the agency to “add context to analytic assessments,” with NGA noting that this data will help monitor and quantify economic and environmental activity around the globe, along with improving military capabilities. In their announcement of the RFP, Luno A is mentioned as focusing on identifying unclassified computer vision capabilities, including object detection and classification, object segmentation, and pattern detection. Six areas of interest are specifically called out, as follows:
General change detection, climate security and natural resources.
Feature identification.
Infrastructure and high cadence transportation network monitoring.
Facility monitoring.
Incidental and fortuitous processing.
Emerging products, data and services.
Luno A is an expansion of an earlier program from NGA, “Economic Indicator Monitoring,” which was launched in 2021. Originally, that EIM contract was for $29 million before ultimately being expanded to $60 million due to high demand for the unclassified analytics and services. NGA says Luno A will “expand access to data and services for the National System for Geospatial Intelligence, accelerate analytic workflow modernization objectives and integrate data and services into enterprise capabilities.”
Although it’s certainly not surprising that a national agency focused on intelligence derived from geospatial sources is upping its attention toward this extremely valuable space-derived data along with analytics capabilities around it. According to reports from Space News, those throughout the sector are paying attention to this. They report that Luno A is drawing “widespread attention in the geospatial intelligence sector,” and that a “large number of bids” are expected.
The original EIM contract, off of which Luno A is building, was awarded to five companies: Axim Geospatial LLC, BAE Systems, Ball Aerospace, BlackSky Geospatial Solutions, and Royce Geospatial Consultants. NGA has not indicated how many companies will be involved in this IDIQ, saying only that it would be “multiple.”
“Because of the incredible success with the EIM contract, we’ve substantially increased our financial commitment to commercial capabilities with Luno A,” said Devin Brande, director of NGA Commercial Operations, in a statement. “As the quantity and quality of commercial data continues to increase, we must continue to partner effectively with industry to keep pace with state-of-the-art analytic capabilities and meet the increasing demands of our customers.”
