Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR) (TSX: MAXR), a global technology
innovator powering the new space economy, today announced that it
has been awarded a follow-on contract valued at $4.3 million by the
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to test its
Geospatial Cloud Analytics (GCA) Hub.
The GCA Hub is an unclassified environment with multi-source
content that enables military users to leverage machine learning to
extract insights about the planet at scale and make critical
decisions for projects like predicting food shortages, political
unrest and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This
raises Maxar’s total award amount for the GCA Hub to $7.5
million.
Under its first GCA Hub contract awarded by DARPA in 2018, Maxar
built the secure, cloud-based GCA Hub on the foundations of its
Geospatial Big Data (GBDX) platform, a commercially-developed,
cloud-based analytics platform. Maxar integrated 18 geospatial data
sources, including its 100-petabyte high-resolution optical
satellite imagery library, RADARSAT-2 synthetic aperture radar
(SAR) data and SAR data curation and processing tools, automatic
identification system (AIS) data, open-source and commercial data
provided by the company’s growing list of content ecosystem
partners. These datasets help users detect features and changes on
the surface of the Earth faster and more accurately.
In addition, Maxar built new analytic tools to streamline and
enhance the creation of machine learning training data sets. This
builds on the company’s rich history of providing curated,
open-source data sets for machine learning challenges, such as
SpaceNet, xView and IARPA FMoW.
In phase two of the GCA Hub contract, 10 Technical Area 2 Expert
(TA2) providers are building and training machine learning models
in Maxar’s GCA Hub that seek to address use cases designated by
DARPA. Maxar provides technical support as the TA2 providers work
to make sense of the growing volume of geospatial data, which can
be mined to reveal insights about a wide range of pressing national
security concerns.
“Maxar is proud that DARPA selected its GCA Hub for the testing
phase of this program, demonstrating that solutions can be made
faster for the end user when government harnesses commercial
innovation,” said Tony Frazier, Maxar’s Executive Vice President
for Global Field Operations.
DARPA funded Lockheed Martin, a TA2 provider working within
Maxar’s GCA Hub, to create a machine learning model that uses
Maxar’s WorldView optical satellite imagery and RADARSAT-2 SAR
imagery to initially identify oil fracking sites. This model aims
to allow DARPA end users to monitor existing sites and detect when
new ones are built.
“Maxar’s GCA Hub makes it easy for Lockheed Martin to leverage
multiple high-quality data sources to build and train our oil
fracking detection model,” said Girard Andres, Lockheed Martin
Director of Mission Systems Capabilities. “With Maxar’s GCA Hub,
our data scientists are now able to extract geospatial information
at scale, focus on understanding what’s happening on Earth, and
interpret that information to make critical decisions with
confidence.”
Lockheed Martin will be demonstrating their object detection and
classification model for identifying and monitoring facilities,
equipment and objects worldwide in Maxar’s GCA Hub at their booth
at the GEOINT Symposium in San Antonio, Texas from June 2-5,
2019.
In addition to traditional remote sensing data sources for
machine learning, Maxar’s GCA Hub also enables access to
non-traditional data sets required to perform geospatial predictive
analytics. Another TA2 provider, Culmen International, integrated a
data set from a second Maxar product, Signature Analyst
Server, which should help DARPA research methods to detect and
predict foreign civil unrest.
“Maxar’s GCA Hub is a powerful, complementary tool for
geospatial predictive analytics and we look forward to further
testing its capabilities,” said Mark Dumas, Culmen’s Chief Strategy
Officer and VP of Technology Solutions.
The operations of DigitalGlobe, SSL and Radiant Solutions were
unified under the Maxar brand in February; MDA continues to operate
as an independent business unit within the Maxar organization.
This document was cleared by DARPA on May 14, 2019. Approved for
Public Release, Distribution Unlimited.
About Maxar Technologies
As a global leader of advanced space technology solutions, Maxar
is at the nexus of the new space economy, developing and sustaining
the infrastructure and delivering the information, services, and
systems that unlock the promise of space for commercial and
government markets. The operations of DigitalGlobe, SSL and Radiant
Solutions were unified under the Maxar brand in February; MDA
continues to operate as an independent business unit within the
Maxar organization. As a trusted partner with 5,900 employees in
over 30 global locations, Maxar provides vertically integrated
capabilities and expertise including satellites, Earth imagery,
robotics, geospatial data and analytics to help customers
anticipate and address their most complex mission-critical
challenges with confidence. Every day, billions of people rely on
Maxar to communicate, share information and data, and deliver
insights that Build a Better World. Maxar trades on the New York
Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange as MAXR. For more
information, visit www.maxar.com.
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Investor Relations ContactJason GurskyMaxar VP Investor
Relations1-303-684-2207jason.gursky@maxar.comMedia ContactKristin
CarringerMaxar Media
Relations1-303-684-4352kristin.carringer@maxar.com
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