In The News

A Rocket Lab Electron successfully placed a BlackSky high-resolution imaging satellite into orbit on a June 2 launch.

The Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 7:57 p.m. Eastern. Its payload, a Gen-3 imaging satellite for BlackSky, deployed from the rocket’s kick stage 52 minutes later into a circular orbit at an altitude of 470 kilometers.

“With each successive launch BlackSky expands on-orbit capacity, introduces Gen-3 capabilities and furthers our ability to meet the demands of the most time-dominant missions,” Brian O’Toole, chief executive of BlackSky, said in a statement after the launch.

BlackSky Technology and Rocket Lab USA have established a launch window opening May 27 for the second Gen-3 satellite.

The launch, named “Full Stream Ahead,” will add very high-resolution 35-centimeter imaging capability to BlackSky’s high-cadence, low-latency data and AI-enabled analytics offerings.

“Each successive Gen-3 launch represents a major step forward for our global defense and intelligence customer base with the prospect of new mission applications that will be enabled by combining very high-resolution imaging with high-frequency monitoring and advanced AI analytics,” said Brian O’Toole, BlackSky CEO. “With every Gen-3 addition we improve revisit rates, capacity and the quantity and quality of actionable intelligence for our customers.”

Commercial satellite imagery and sensing leaders see growing demand in the international market for geospatial intelligence and are looking at ways to increase collaboration and streamline the way U.S. government and international partners can access commercial insights.

BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole echoed “strong momentum” from international government customers, saying these governments want to move faster with commercial capabilities.

“Our partners want to more rapidly build internal capacity, either through sovereign satellites, but also in software and AI. I think that’s where the opportunity is right now — countries around the world see the need to accelerate their space-based intelligence capabilities. Commercial is a really good way to get there very quickly that leverages things that are already on orbit, plus entering into long-term partnerships that help build that capacity,” O’Toole said.

Coordinating observations of space-based sensors, known as tipping and cueing, has been an industry goal for decades. In spite of daunting technical challenges, tipping and cueing is now becoming more common and more seamless thanks in part to the proliferation of satellite sensors and artificial intelligence, which helps automate the task of sharing the geographic location of an interesting site or the trajectory of a moving vehicle or vessel. It’s also accelerating the fusion of data from complementary sensors.

“The real opportunity is making Earth-observation satellites work together to deliver actionable intelligence,” said Brian O’Toole, the CEO of imagery and analytics firm BlackSky. “Most customers don’t want to process raw data. They just want the answers.”

While BlackSky Technology [BKSY] said that it is to make its Generation-3 Earth imaging satellites widely available this year, the company is offering “early access” to a select group of “multiple international defense sector customers,” BlackSky said on Tuesday.

“The customers will now be able to integrate very high-resolution, 35-centimeter imagery into daily intelligence operations,” the company said.

BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole said in the company’s Tuesday statement that the Gen-3 early access agreements “demonstrate confidence in the quality and reliability of our imagery products and will give these customers transformative capabilities that BlackSky uniquely delivers through our proven end-to-end, next-generation artificial intelligence [AI]-enabled commercial architecture.”

BlackSky Technology says it has successfully completed commissioning of its first Gen-3 satellite capable of capturing 35-cm resolution imagery.

BlackSky says its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) software system can rapidly detect vehicles, aircraft, vessels and buildings within images gathered by its new Gen-3 satellite.

The company launched its first example of the Gen-3 in February and it is now using its AI software to automatically detect and identify objects, BlackSky said on March 13.

“BlackSky’s AI-enabled analytics enhance operational efficiency and give analysts the ability to quickly and efficiently extract a new level of valuable insights from vast amounts of imagery, detecting patterns, anomalies and changes without requiring extensive manual review,” says Brian O’Toole, BlackSky’s CEO.

BlackSky Technology shared the first images from the company’s first Gen-3 satellite which launched on Feb. 18.

BlackSky shared two very high-resolution images on Tuesday, one collected over the Sydney International Airport and the other over the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia. The company said these images were collected just five days after the launch.

CEO Brian O’Toole said the image quality is “exceeding customer expectations” with minimal calibration. BlackSky expects the image quality to get better as the company moves through the calibration process and the satellite reaches its operational altitude. BlackSky expects to begin providing sample imagery to customers within the next 30 days, ahead of schedule.

BlackSky Technology on Tuesday said that it won a “multimillion dollar” contract from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to manage and operate one of the company’s Generation-3 Earth imaging satellites for the Tactical GEOINT (TACGEO) program.

The December 2024 contract builds on an award BlackSky announced in September 2020 with DIU that included a preliminary design review of the Gen-3 satellite for the Army TACGEO prototype program. On Feb. 18, Rocket Lab launched the first spacecraft for BlackSky’s planned Gen-3 constellation.

BlackSky launched its first Gen-3 Earth observation satellites aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket yesterday, adding higher-resolution imaging to its data offerings.

The next-gen satellite offers 35-cm resolution imaging capability and will help improve automated detection and identification for the company’s Spectra AI-powered platform. BlackSky says Gen-3’s overall performance will be three times greater than its Gen-2 satellites.