{"id":49146,"date":"2025-05-19T23:56:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T15:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/commercial-satellite-imagery-leaders-see-increased-international-demand\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T23:56:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T15:56:17","slug":"commercial-satellite-imagery-leaders-see-increased-international-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/commercial-satellite-imagery-leaders-see-increased-international-demand\/","title":{"rendered":"Commercial Satellite Imagery Leaders See Increased International Demand"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

ST LOUIS \u2014<\/em> 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.  <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a speed to adoption in the international market that\u2019s accelerated like never before,\u201d Maxar Intelligence<\/strong> CEO Dan Smoot said Monday at GEOINT Symposium 2025 in St. Louis, Missouri. <\/p>\n

Smoot referenced to the situation in March of this year when the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) temporarily suspended Ukraine\u2019s access to the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery system (GEGD), which provides access to commercial satellite imagery. In media statements at the time, Maxar said it temporarily suspended access to Ukrainian users through GEGD. Access was later restored. <\/p>\n

Smoot called it an \u201cinteresting time,\u201d and that it opened the world\u2019s eyes to how impactful commercial GEOINT is for defense and intelligence missions. \u201cI think sometimes there\u2019s an understanding about what we did for mapping but truly how the information is used to help the warfighter really became apparent in these discussions,\u201d Smoot said. <\/p>\n

He described a shifting geopolitical landscape as European and NATO nations are looking to invest more in space capabilities. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing that nations are stepping up, realizing that they don\u2019t have time to go and build assets. \u2026 Commercial is its path to develop capabilities needed moving forward,\u201d Smoot said. \u201cOur operational capabilities to deliver this information in a timely manner is becoming more and more important for them every day, for more national security. There\u2019s been a major shift because of recent policies to help open up the international markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

BlackSky<\/strong> CEO Brian O\u2019Toole echoed \u201cstrong momentum\u201d from international government customers, saying these governments want to move faster with commercial capabilities. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur partners want to more rapidly build internal capacity, either through sovereign satellites, but also in software and AI. I think that\u2019s where the opportunity is right now \u2014 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,\u201d O\u2019Toole said. <\/p>\n

Motoyuki Arai, CEO of Japanese synthetic aperture radar (SAR) company Synspective<\/strong> said that he sees \u201chuge demand\u201d from the Japan Ministry of Defense. The Japanese government has an advanced strategy to deploy its budget for technology, including space capabilities, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a good opportunity for us, but we have to leverage this opportunity to make collaboration to [meet] international demand, not only for national security but also for commercial businesses as well,\u201d Arai said. <\/p>\n

Speaking to commercial imagery\u2019s role in Ukraine, Capella Space<\/strong> CEO Frank Backes said Ukraine showed the value of Earth Observation (EO) data from a military tactical perspective and not just an intelligence perspective \u2014 driven by speed of access. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe barrier and the driver there is latency. How quickly can we get from tasking to the satellite capturing the data that you\u2019re interested in, getting that back in the hands of the warfighter who\u2019s interested in that particular piece of information,\u201d Backes said. \u201cLatency has been a big challenge, without question.\u201d <\/p>\n

Earlier this month, quantum networking company IonQ announced a deal to acquire Capella Space to accelerate its plans in quantum networking. Backes said that merging with a quantum company will lead to improved latency and security. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons that we\u2019re excited about the IonQ acquisition merger with us, is getting after what latency represents. The other side is security \u2014 the need for us to be able to deliver reliable, secure data to those customers is more critical than it\u2019s ever been. Being able to take the technology and be able to create sovereign control and sovereign access is really what the next generation of the commercial systems are going to represent,\u201d Backes said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ST LOUIS \u2014 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.   \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a speed to adoption in the international market that\u2019s accelerated like never before,\u201d Maxar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}