BusinessEOMilitary

Maxar and Satellogic Tag-Team EO Offering

Maxar spotted Russian aircraft and military equipment at Khmeimim airbase in Syria. Image: Maxar
Maxar spotted Russian aircraft and military equipment at Khmeimim airbase in Syria. Image: Maxar

Maxar Intelligence and Satellogic, Inc., are working together to sharpen their ability to provide monitoring and change-detection data to US and international government customers.

The arrangement, announced today, gives Maxar the exclusive right to task, collect, and distribute Satellogic’s satellite imagery and apply machine learning and AI to detect changes on the ground.

Match made in orbit: The unique partnership is based on the simple idea that if one is good, more is better when it comes to eyes in the skies.

“In today’s dynamic environment, warfighters and intelligence analysts need to be able to detect and understand change over many areas of interest simultaneously,” Peter Wilczynski, Maxar’s chief product officer, said in the announcement. “To achieve this more ambitious mission, customers need access to more than one constellation.”

By taking advantage of Satellogic’s high revisit rates, Maxar can quickly—and cost effectively—source images anywhere on the planet to detect activity and change. When customers want to look closer at a particular point on the ground, Maxar can then task its own satellites to snap a more detailed view—down to 30 cm resolution.

The combined constellation gives governments the ability to gather insights on multiple geographies at once, while balancing image resolution and cost.

Friends today… Both EO companies have plans to grow their constellations in the coming years—seemingly bringing them into tougher competition—but for the moment their partnership provides mutual benefits. 

The agreement beefs up Maxar’s virtual constellation, which also includes imagery from Umbra’s SAR sats, while also opening the door for Satellogic to reach a wider customer base—and there’s plenty of demand to go around. 

“This agreement with Maxar is a watershed moment in Earth observation, providing crucial capacity to warfighters and allies,” Satellogic President Matt Tirman said in the announcement. “Combining our constellation with Maxar’s expertise enables comprehensive monitoring and analytics to meet the demand for actionable intelligence.”

Related Stories
LEOMilitaryScience

DoD Taps Slingshot to Track Adversaries on Orbit

Using photometric sensors, Slingshot can spot an orbital object’s unique light-based “fingerprint” to help the DoD understand the technology that America’s adversaries are deploying in space.

EOState of the Space Industry 2025

The State of EO 2025

“I think the rubber is really going to meet the road,” Umbra COO Todd Master told Payload. “A lot of interesting tech got put into space. The question now is what of that data actually is needed by customers—that customers are willing to pay for?”

MilitaryPolicy

Defense Nominees Call for Closer Ties with Industry

Defense acquisitions are too slow to keep up with the needs of the moment, and the administration’s new defense appointees are planning to do something about it.

BusinessMilitary

Booz Allen Preps for the Golden Dome

The president wants a Golden Dome missile defense system, and the space industry is standing ready to get him one. Booz Allen Hamilton is the latest space firm to publish a concept for a distributed satellite system that could identify and help to intercept missile attacks in their tracks. The constellation design, which the company […]