Herndon company awarded intelligence contract

Herndon- and Seattle-based global monitoring company BlackSky announced Wednesday it was awarded a contract from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

The company declined to release the amount awarded from the contract.

The IARPA leads research programs for the U.S. Intelligence community. BlackSky will work to develop IARPA’s Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique (SMART) Program, which will automate space-based imagery analysis. The company will use its artificial intelligence platform to develop a responsive system to monitor large-scale construction of military bases, stadiums, campuses, dams and airports.

“This is a tremendous breakthrough in unsupervised learning for our Spectra AI platform and an unprecedented step toward the future of global monitoring,” BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole said in a statement. “The IARPA SMART program is a natural fit for BlackSky given our deep expertise in geospatial analytics and our proven ability to deliver first-to-know insights.”

Founded in 2013, BlackSky provides satellite imaging services using machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision and natural language processing.

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