SAN FRANCISCO - Orbital Sidekick (OSK) announced that as part of the Joint Agency Commercial Imaging Evaluation (JACIE) partnership, it has signed a technical assistance agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. This agreement will allow remote sensing subject matter experts across multiple government agencies to evaluate OSK satellite imagery and its capacity for scientific analysis.
“The OSK team understands that reliable product quality is critical for supporting the wide range of challenging remote sensing applications across government, NGOs, industry, and academia,” said Dr. Katie Corcoran, Director of Government Affairs. “This agreement enables JACIE partners across USGS, NASA, NGA, NOAA, USDA, and NRO to characterize and evaluate OSK’s satellite imagery to ensure the entire remote sensing community is supported by reliable hyperspectral data products for years to come.”
OSK’s six-satellite hyperspectral constellation (GHOSt) will launch during 2022. Each satellite in the constellation will capture 512 spectral bands across the visible to shortwave infrared region (VSWIR, 400 - 2500 nm) at 8.3 m (HSI) and 3.0 m (panchromatic) GSD, and combined with a revisit rate of up to daily for certain locations.
“This partnership with USGS is incredibly valuable from a product standpoint,” said Michael DeJesus, VP of Product at OSK. “Working with USGS will help us expand our market reach in the ESG sector, enabling more objective and consistent monitoring services. More broadly, the important work of evaluating our data provides added value across our company’s wide range of application areas.”
“We are thrilled to offer our support as OSK takes hyperspectral imaging to the next level,” said Gregory Stensaas, RCA-EO Project Manager at USGS. “This partnership allows OSK to develop science-ready data products by leveraging highly relevant inter-agency subject matter expertise.”