It’s one thing to talk about commercial geospatial intelligence and another to see it.
At the 2025 GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis last month, companies displayed their latest imagery and discussed insights analysts can draw from diverse remote-sensing datasets.
Constellations from startups and established companies are multiplying rapidly and contributing valuable observations that intelligence analysts use to monitor natural disasters, plan combat operations and enhance border security, U.S. and allied national security leaders said.
Commercial data improves cooperation among allies because unclassified datasets can be shared quickly, said UK Strategic Command GEOINT officer Katie Davies.
They are also easy to release to the public, which helps governments engage and educate their citizens, said Melissa Best, Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organization assistant secretary of intelligence and insights.
“Commercial GEOINT is even more essential these days, as the government looks to the private sector for faster innovation,” said NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth.
Here’s a sampling of recently released imagery.
This is a hyperspectral image of the Richat Structure, a geological feature in northwestern Mauritania also known as the Eye of the Sahara, taken by Wyvern’s Dragonette-001 satellite on July 23, 2024. Wyvern has four hyperspectral sensors in orbit.
Canadian startup Wyvern publicly released 25 images in May because hyperspectral imagery, which reveals the spectral fingerprint of various materials, “is a powerful but relatively unfamiliar dataset,” said Kristen Cote, Wyvern co-founder and chief technology officer. “By making this data openly available, our goal is to help researchers, developers, analysts and even students experiment, build, extract insights and generally familiarize themselves with what hyperspectral imagery can do.”
Indian startup Pixxel revealed “first-light” images in March from its first three Firefly hyperspectral satellites. Imagery of India’s River Ganga shows channels, floodplains and nearby farmland. The hyperspectral views also help farmers identify variations in soil moisture and forest managers monitor vegetation health.
Within a couple of years, Pixxel plans to provide daily, global hyperspectral imagery with a constellation of 24 satellites. Fireflies capture 40-kilometer-swath imagery with a resolution of five meters per pixel.
Finnish synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite operator Iceye has teamed up with Safran.AI, a subsidiary of France’s Safran Electronics and Defense, to automate imagery analysis. Radar imagery, which can be acquired at night and through clouds, is more difficult to interpret than visual imagery because microwave reflections produce speckled grey and black dots.
Safran.AI offers tools to quickly process SAR imagery and classify aircraft, vessels or other objects, said John Cartwright, Iceye head of data product.
Speedy processing is necessary because of the dramatic increase in available imagery. Iceye has launched 48 satellites to date, with another 24 on deck this year and 21 set for launch in 2026.
“Now is the time when AI technologies are mature enough to augment the manual workflows, so the analysts can focus on higher-value analytics,” Cartwright said.
Another key application of AI is enhancing geospatial imagery.
Airbus Pléiades Neo satellites gather imagery with a native resolution of 30 centimeters per pixel. Through an AI algorithm, Airbus sharpens pictures to 15 centimeters, as seen here, making images sharper and objects easier to recognize.
Airbus gathers panchromatic and multispectral images in 14-kilometer swaths with two Pléiades Neo satellites.
Shortwave infrared (SWIR) imagery from Maxar Technologies exposed the devastation caused by the Southern California wildfires that started in January.
SWIR sensors, which penetrate smoke and cloud cover, revealed active fire zones, hot spots and smoldering embers.
Maxar’s Worldview-3 satellite acquires imagery with a resolution of 3.7 meters per pixel in eight SWIR bands. In addition to detecting fire, SWIR has applications for agriculture, forestry and mining.
This article first appeared in the June 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title “Geospatial intelligence: Seeing is believing.”
