NSF's polar geospatial center (PGC) at the university of minnesota is the recognized and established leader in the use of large volumes of high resolution sub-meter commercial satellite data that come…

This federal contract award, valued at $400,187.00, was granted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the Regents of the University of Minnesota, doing business as the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration. The purpose of this three-year project is to provide additional access to commercial satellite imagery to NASA-funded principal investigators through the use of the University of Minnesota's Polar Geospatial Center (PGC) software infrastructure, additional satellite tasking, and data exchange. PGC has an established expertise in managing and utilizing large volumes of high-resolution commercial satellite data from DigitalGlobe, which is provided at no cost to NSF and NASA by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The project aims to synchronize NSF's and NASA's commercial satellite data activities to eliminate duplication and work towards interoperability. This contract does not have a set-aside designation.

NSF's polar geospatial center (PGC) at the university of minnesota is the recognized and established leader in the use of large volumes of high resolution sub-meter commercial satellite data that come from digitalglobe, INC. PGC has developed the tools, specialized software, and the expertise to facilitate using the national geospatial-intelligence agency (NGA)-provided commercial 30, 40, and 50 CM satellite data. PGC s archive at the university of minnesota holds just over 10 petabytes of digitalglobe commercial satellite data, all acquired from NGA. PGC has been acquiring, archiving, and using large volumes of NGA-provided commercial satellite data since 2010. PGC proposes to synchronize NSF's NGA-provided commercial satellite data activities with NASA's activities, because the bandwidth for getting NGA-provided commercial satellite data is finite. Our proposed work with NASA will eliminate duplicity in ordering, duplicity in tasking, and work toward interoperability of our two activities. This project represents a major step forward: only by working together can NSF and NASA together maximize their commercial satellite data holdings. These data are provided at no cost to NSF and to NASA by NGA. The purpose of this three-year project is to provide additional access to commercial satellite imagery to NASA funded PIS through the use of PGC software infrastructure, additional satellite tasking, and data exchange. The specific objective is to combine critical commercial high- resolution satellite imagery at the university of minnesota with NASA s goddard space flight center. New value-added science data sets will be made available as well as training of the research and support communities in technology and techniques used with sub-meter imagery.