Detection via Persistence: Leveraging Commercial Imagery from Small Satellites

摘要

Sandia National Laboratories and BlackSky Geospatial Solutions Inc. are engaged in an exploratory effort to examine how the capabilities emerging in the small satellite industry, combined with the unique remote sensing and analytical capabilities at a U.S. national laboratory, may improve international nuclear safeguards. The effort seeks to leverage capabilities such as adaptable, automated, rapid revisit rates over surrogate sites based on events unfolding on the ground. Such capabilities could be utilized for pattern-of-life analysis or to verify construction of facilities included in an onsite inspection or a safeguards design information questionnaire. Companies such as BlackSky are developing the next generation of small satellite systems capable of collecting those images. Distinguishing factors of BlackSky include their rapid revisit rates (up to 30 imaging opportunities of a selected location per day), individual satellite tasking, and publicly accessible, low cost, high-resolution (1-m or less) images. The increased revisit rates will allow constellations to conduct near real-time activity monitoring of specific geolocations. BlackSky and Sandia also have unique data analysis capabilities. BlackSky can collect large numbers of images, produce correlating reports with photos, create custom alerts, and allow customers to task their satellites if an image is not archived. Sandia maintains strong data analytics expertise, particularly in machine learning, change detection, remote sensing, and modeling and simulation. This paper provides an overview of the project, results of a demonstration of the persistent capability, and associated imagery analysis.