COLORADO SPRINGS — The National Reconnaissance Office, the secretive U.S. intelligence agency responsible for operating the country’s spy satellites, is working on developing a wider range of satellites and updating its ground systems.
Troy Meink, principal deputy director of the NRO, said the agency is working on creating a more varied satellite framework, including smaller and more agile models, to enhance its intelligence gathering across different orbits and mission profiles.
“We are pushing the boundaries to ensure we stay on the leading edge of innovation,” Meink said April 9 in a keynote speech at the 39th Space Symposium. “Over the next decade, we will continue to increase the number of satellites operating across multiple orbits, not just large systems that are the traditional hallmark of the NRO, but also smaller proliferated systems.”
In addition to changing its space-based systems, the NRO is also updating its satellite ground structure, investing heavily in new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help handle the large amount of data coming from its expanding satellite network.
“Expanding our overhead architecture will provide greater revisit rates, increased coverage, and more timely delivery of information,” Meink said. “This will make our collection more agile, eliminate single points of failure and will make our constellations more resilient.”
Ground systems
A more varied space architecture will enable the NRO “to collect an order of magnitude more data,” he said. “So this means ground operations must evolve as well. I think this is actually one of the biggest challenges we face. … It’s not the bits that matter. It’s how the bits get organized into useful information that’s important.”
The NRO’s effort to update its ground systems began several years ago, said Joshua Perrius, senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton. The company is a support contractor to the NRO for ground systems modernization.
“The goal is more automated tasking and collection based on data models and less on human planned activities,” Perrius told SpaceNews.
“The NRO is seeking more advanced data processing and exploitation capabilities on the ground to make sense of all the data it’s collecting,” he said. “They have to be able to rapidly task, re-task, and exploit data from a more diverse and resilient constellation, while also leveraging the latest AI and automation tools,” said Perrius.
He said AI and machine learning algorithms can help to identify critical information and generate actionable intelligence much faster than traditional methods.
While the specific details of the NRO’s plans are classified, Perrius noted, this shift towards a more diverse satellite fleet and AI-powered ground systems signifies a major transformation for the intelligence agency.
The NRO’s fleet includes imaging satellites that take high-resolution pictures of the Earth’s surface, signals intelligence satellites that intercept and collect electronic communications, and others that gather information about objects by analyzing radio frequencies and other emissions.
Access to ‘hostile territory’
“Meink stated at the Space Symposium that millions of individuals rely on the space industry every day. Civilian users use space technology to aid with natural disasters, foresee climate change, and help relief organizations identify how and where to provide humanitarian assistance.”
He also mentioned that the Department of Defense and the intelligence community rely on NRO capabilities, particularly for geolocation information and high-quality images. According to him, NRO systems are often the only tools capable of reaching hostile terrain or difficult landscapes to gather vital data.
