BlackSky’s Newest Satellites Have Completed Commissioning and Entered Into Commercial Operations

The company’s growing constellation now delivers more revisits and improved image resolution

HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BlackSky, a leading provider of global monitoring services, geospatial intelligence and satellite imagery, announced its fifth and sixth global satellites have completed commissioning and are in commercial operations. The addition of these two satellites to the BlackSky constellation brings higher resolution and increased revisits for key customer markets around the world.

These latest two satellites launched in August 2020 and successfully achieved first images within 58 hours of operation. The satellites have been delivering customer collections since that time while concurrently completing the commissioning process.

“The addition of our fifth and sixth satellites into our commercial constellation is an important step in our strategy to provide our customers with data that materially impacts their mission and business objectives,” said Brian O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky. “We’ve always prioritized speed and utility so our customers experience incredible first-to-know insights. This campaign continues to execute on that commitment by delivering intelligence that can change outcomes.”

BlackSky’s fifth and sixth satellites are already delivering enhanced image performance and growing revisits for BlackSky customers. By flying at lower altitudes than other satellites in BlackSky’s constellation, these latest two satellites can produce images with resolution up to 80 cm — a 20 percent improvement over the existing satellites in the constellation.

The position of these satellites at an inclination of 53 degrees will allow additional revisits across all markets with heightened performance in Europe and Asia. These advances will unlock more analytic and data driven opportunities for BlackSky’s customers.

The BlackSky constellation now includes six satellites. The company is on track to add 10 more satellites to its constellation by the end of 2021.

About BlackSky LLC

BlackSky is a global monitoring company. We monitor activities and facilities worldwide by harnessing the world’s emerging sensor networks and leveraging our own satellite constellation. We process millions of observations daily from space, air, environmental sensors, asset tracking sensors, Industrial IoT, and Internet-enabled narrative sources. BlackSky’s on-demand swarm of satellites can image a location multiple times throughout the day. We monitor for pattern-of-life anomalies to produce alerts that enhance situational awareness. Our monitoring service is powered by cutting-edge compute techniques including machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and natural language processing. BlackSky’s global monitoring is available via a simple subscription and requires no IT infrastructure or setup. For more information visit www.blacksky.com.