The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) award to Albedo expands on the company’s original NRO Strategic Commercial Enhancements program—this milestone expands Albedo’s partnership with the NRO and positions its VLEO platform to deliver next-generation imaging performance to U.S. defense and intelligence customers.
The NRO’s SCE program is designed to onboard emerging commercial data providers across multiple sensing modalities—including electro-optical, radar, radio frequency, hyperspectral, and thermal infrared—to enhance national overhead architecture. Stage II enables the NRO to conduct on-orbit assessments and demonstrations, and to begin tasking and acquiring commercial data from selected providers.
Through this award, NRO will be able to purchase Albedo’s 10 cm visible, co-collected, 2 m thermal IR data collected by its Clarity-1 satellite, launched in March on SpaceX’s Transporter-13 mission. NRO will also be able to evaluate Vis-Sharp Thermal™ product, a fused product that overlays Albedo’s visible imagery with its thermal infrared data, supporting activity detection, indications and warnings, and time-sensitive target discrimination that cannot be obtained from a single source of data alone.
Clarity-1 completed successful spacecraft commissioning in LEO and is at under 430 km as it autonomously maneuvers and descends to VLEO. Imaging will commence soon – once it’s low enough to safely jettison the telescope cover. Clarity’s unprecedented resolution enables a robust alternative to planes/drones in denied areas and conflict zones, increasing the likelihood of obtaining certainty.
This award gives us a critical opportunity to demonstrate what VLEO can offer in terms of performance, revisit, and resilience,” said Topher Haddad, CEO and Co-founder. “It reflects the hard work of our team and partnership with NRO. It’s a key step toward delivering NIIRS 7-class imagery to U.S. government users, and it affirms the role of VLEO as a vital new orbital layer for space-based resiliency.”