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Vantor awarded USSF SDA contract for continuous tracking of high-interest space objects

Vantor will be supporting U.S. Space Force (USSF) in tracking high-interest objects that pass through “blind spots” in space that are not visible to ground sensor networks.

Under the contract, which will support the USSF’s Joint Commercial Operations program, Vantor will use its high-resolution imagery of space objects, also known as non-Earth imagery (NEI), to deliver key information about an object’s position and trajectory. The crucial observations will allow Space Force to maintain persistent custody of the high-interest objects and will be particularly useful in situations where an object has the potential to change orbit––a situation that could endanger the safety of U.S. assets in space.

Position and trajectory measurements on objects in ground sensor “blind spots” can be delivered through the precise intelligence collected from NEI. Vantor satellites can capture images of other spacecraft at an industry-leading resolution of less than 10 cm from hundreds of kilometers away, making it possible to quickly characterize those space objects and determine their health and status.

While not specific to Vantor’s work with the U.S. Space Force, this visual showcases our space-to-space imaging capabilities, also known as non-Earth imaging (NEI). The bottom-right visual shows the Vantor physics engine user interface, which is the proprietary software we use to assess space-to-space imagery feasibilities and plan our collections. On the left is a NEI collected of TRACERS-2, a spacecraft that is part of a NASA mission to study how the Sun’s energy interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. On the top-right, you can see intelligence about the spacecraft’s orientation and velocity, which we deliver with every space-to-space image to help analysts understand how the object is behaving.

This Space Force award is one of several Space Domain Awareness (SDA)-related contracts that Vantor, previously known as Maxar Intelligence, has recently won.

Vantor is an awardee of The Office of Space Commerce’s “Commercial COLA Gap” Pathfinder program. The COLA Gap refers to the period right after a satellite launch when space traffic coordination is hampered by limited or imprecise tracking data. During this time, newly deployed satellites may not have reliable positional information, creating a spike in collision risk and posing coordination challenges for satellite operators, launch providers, and traffic management authorities. Vantor’s NEI and Space Domain Awareness insights will deliver visual-based intelligence to help minimize collision risk.

Vantor was also included in Space Force’s Domain Awareness Tools, Applications and Processing Lab’s Apollo Accelerator Cohort 6. Vantor will support Space Force by automatically tasking high-resolution NEI to enable rapid response decision-making on threats in orbit.

Vantor’s unique visual-based space domain awareness capabilities serve as a critical complement to traditional sensor networks, providing real-time intelligence that allows customers like Space Force to achieve persistent Space Domain Awareness,” said Susanne Hake, Senior Vice President & General Manager, U.S. Government at Vantor. “Our NEI capability serves as a foundation for advanced orbital intelligence, delivering vital insights about the state and directional paths of objects in LEO––providing a critical national security advantage in a domain that is increasingly congested and contested.”