Capella Space, an information services company that provides high quality Earth observation data on demand, today released the first high-resolution SAR images from Capella-3 and Capella-4, the latest satellites in the company’s constellation that launched with SpaceX earlier this year.
At 50cm x 50cm, these Spot images are the highest resolution commercially available today, providing customers with significantly more insights to support Earth observation monitoring and change detection. Capella Space is the first American commercial SAR provider and the first commercial company to provide 50cm resolution SAR imagery.
To date, Capella’s commercial constellation has collected more than 34TB of data since commercial operations launched earlier this year, and is on a path to increase this data collection exponentially up to 10PB of data by the end of this year. Capella’s SAR systems image in all weather, day or night, and capture amplitude and phase history data enabling the extraction of highly valuable information. Its new First Light images highlight key SAR applications including timely disaster recovery, infrastructure monitoring, identifying types of aircraft or vehicles on the ground, and monitoring for indications and warnings of potential threats.
Today, Capella is also announcing a new strategic partnership with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the not-for-profit strategic investor, that accelerates the development and delivery of cutting-edge technologies to U.S. government agencies and their allies.
“With the recent launch of Capella-3 and Capella-4, we have effectively tripled our commercial constellation, enabling us to deliver our Spot imagery at an increasingly higher frequency to help our customers solve some of the world’s toughest problems,” said Payam Banazadeh, CEO and founder of Capella Space. “Five years ago, the U.S. government sought out Silicon Valley commercial innovation to deploy SAR systems at scale, and we founded Capella Space as a result. With this latest partnership with In-Q-Tel, we look forward to expanding our relationship with its government partners. Our team is proud to provide reliable, high-resolution SAR imagery to give our government a competitive edge and meet their mission-critical objectives.”
“In-Q-Tel is excited about the capabilities offered by Capella’s newest systems on-orbit, and we look forward to working with the company to help our government partners address their enduring need for reliable and repeatable imagery, despite poor weather, for applications that include disaster relief and environmental land use,” added Tom Gillespie, Managing Partner, Investments, In-Q-Tel.
Capella’s expanded partnership with In-Q-Tel involves a development effort that will impact the mission and marks the latest in a series of contracts Capella has that serve several U.S. Intelligence and Department of Defense agencies, including the Defense Innovation Unit, National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Navy.