DebrisEO

BlackSky Doubles Down on Aussie NEI Partnership

One of BlackSky's sats snapped a photo of China's Tiangong space station from a distance of 83 km. Image: BlackSky
One of BlackSky’s sats snapped a photo of China’s Tiangong space station from a distance of 83 km. Image: BlackSky

BlackSky ($BKSY) announced a seven-figure deal yesterday that will expand its non-Earth imaging (NEI) partnership with HEO, the Australian space domain awareness company.

The two companies partnered up in September (also to the tune of seven figures), under a deal to place BlackSky’s NEI services within HEO’s sensor network. This week’s deal extends that partnership.

It gives HEO’s software platform—called HEO Inspect—the ability to autonomously task BlackSky’s Gen-2 satellites, which then deliver non-Earth imagery and metadata directly into HEO Inspect.

Working overtime: The expanded partnership also comes with very little opportunity cost to BlackSky, officials explained, because the NEI requests are mostly expected to arrive when BlackSky sats aren’t imaging the Earth.

“BlackSky has the ability to leverage remaining capacity typically associated with satellites passing over the ocean or satellites in eclipse, traveling across the dark side of Earth,” Brian O’Toole, BlackSky CEO, said in a statement. “Customers can now use that excess capacity…to monitor objects in space, with no humans in the loop.”

HEOd on a swivel: Including partners like BlackSky, HEO’s network consists of over 40 NEI sensors. HEO also gathers its own orbital data through seven of its own optical NEI sensors, which fly as hosted payloads aboard partner satellites including Turion’s Droid-1, Impulse Space’s Mira OTV, and Sidus Space’s LizzieSats.

The result is that HEO can offer NEI data on an increasingly wide swath of space. 

“Customers shouldn’t have to think about where our cameras are. They should just tell us the object they care about, and within hours we’ll deliver an image and the analysis they need,” Will Crowe, HEO’s CEO, told Payload via email. “[We’re] placing cameras as close as possible to the assets and threats our customers need to see…It’s software first, hardware only where we must, ensuring complete coverage at a cost customers can actually scale with.”

HEO plans to have 60 sensors in LEO by the end of the year, and expects to begin offering NEI coverage of GEO in 2026.

Related Stories
BusinessEOTechnology

Muon Space Will Tap into Starlink’s Laser Network

Muon Space will integrate Starlink’s mini-laser terminals into future iterations of Muon’s Halo satellite platform as soon as 2027.

EOMilitary

Planet Wins $12.8M NGA Contract for Maritime Intelligence from Space

Planet’s ($PL) eyes in space are constantly keeping watch over the seas, and the military is looking to increase the ways it takes advantage. On Friday, the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which supports both DoD and the intelligence community with imagery collected in orbit, awarded Planet Labs a $12.8M contract through the Luno B […]

BusinessEOStartups

Exclusive: Albedo Drops its Commercial Imagery Business

Albedo will abandon its imaging business to focus entirely on building VLEO satellite buses for other payload operators.

BusinessEO

Maxar Companies Rebrand to Lanteris, Vantor

More than two years after Maxar split into two separate companies, both entities have rebranded to alleviate confusion in the industry and ensure their names reflect their individual missions.