COLORADO SPRINGS — The Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace, the secretive U.S. intelligence company liable for working the nation’s spy satellites, is creating a extra numerous fleet of satellites alongside an overhaul of its floor methods.
Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the NRO, mentioned the company is trying to develop a extra numerous satellite tv for pc structure, together with smaller and extra maneuverable fashions, to enhance its intelligence gathering throughout a wider vary of orbits and mission profiles.
“We’re pushing the boundaries to make sure we keep on the forefront of innovation,” Meink mentioned April 9 in a keynote speech on the thirty ninth Area Symposium. “Over the following decade, we are going to proceed to extend the variety of satellites working throughout a number of orbits, not simply giant methods which can be the normal hallmark of the NRO, but in addition smaller proliferated methods.”
In parallel with the modifications to its space-based methods, the NRO can also be overhauling its satellite tv for pc floor structure, investing closely in new applied sciences like synthetic intelligence (AI) and machine studying to assist course of the flood of knowledge coming from its increasing satellite tv for pc community.
“Increasing our overhead structure will present higher revisit charges, elevated protection, and extra well timed supply of knowledge,” Meink mentioned. “This may make our assortment extra agile, eradicate single factors of failure and can make our constellations extra resilient.”
Floor methods
A extra numerous area structure will permit the NRO “to gather an order of magnitude extra information,” he mentioned. “So this implies floor operations should evolve as nicely. I believe that is truly one of many greatest challenges we face. … It’s not the bits that matter. It’s how the bits get organized into helpful data that’s essential.”
The NRO’s push to modernize its floor methods began a number of years in the past, mentioned Joshua Perrius, senior vp of Booz Allen Hamilton. The corporate is a help contractor to the NRO for floor methods modernization.
“The aim is extra automated tasking and assortment primarily based on information fashions and fewer on human deliberate actions,” Perrius advised SpaceNews.
“The NRO is looking for extra superior information processing and exploitation capabilities on the bottom to make sense of all the information it’s accumulating,” he mentioned. “They’ve to have the ability to quickly job, re-task, and exploit information from a extra numerous and resilient constellation, whereas additionally leveraging the newest AI and automation instruments,” mentioned Perrius.
He mentioned AI and machine studying algorithms may also help to establish vital data and generate actionable intelligence a lot sooner than conventional strategies.
Whereas the particular particulars of the NRO’s plans are categorized, Perrius famous, this shift in direction of a extra numerous satellite tv for pc fleet and AI-powered floor methods signifies a serious transformation for the intelligence company.
The NRO’s fleet consists of imaging satellites that take high-resolution footage of the Earth’s floor, alerts intelligence satellites that intercept and acquire digital communications, and others that collect details about objects by analyzing radio frequencies and different emissions.
Entry to ‘hostile territory’
“Thousands and thousands of individuals depend on us on a regular basis,” Meink mentioned on the Area Symposium. “Civilian clients rely upon area assortment to help them with pure disasters, assist predict local weather change, and assist reduction companies decide how and the place to ship humanitarian assist.”
The Division of Protection and the intelligence group, he added, rely upon the NRO capabilities, for instance, for geolocation information and high-resolution imagery. “The NRO methods are sometimes the one instruments capable of entry hostile territory or rugged terrain so we will acquire vital data.”
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