US SAR Companies Get Significant Boost as NOAA Restrictions Expire

Thanks to the recent culmination of regulatory changes that started five years ago, American Earth observation companies are now in a potentially commanding position in the growing market. In particular, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) companies like Umbra and Capella Space have had nearly all licensing burdens removed thanks to a recent NOAA decision, and Umbra is already taking the opportunity to provide new higher-quality imagery to both its customers and broader communities.

Streamlining and tiering

In 2018, in response to the impressive growth of the private space sector, the US federal government issued a directive to streamline and clarify the rules regarding the space industry. This included Earth observation, where the focus was to “encourage the expansion of the licensing of commercial remote sensing activities.” 

In 2020, these new rules were clarified, signifying that the government was moving away from the non-transparent “interagency discussions” that determined previous licensing decisions to a more transparent and structured approach. This new approach was made to recognize the swift growth of the American remote sensing sector, as well as the “dozens of foreign systems” employing advanced imaging technologies such as SAR and hyperspectral imaging.

With that in mind, the Department of Commerce made two notable changes in 2020: to make almost all license restrictions temporary, and to split the licenses into three tiers: Tier 1 included companies that produced unenhanced data similar to that which is otherwise openly available from foreign and otherwise unregulated sources. These were only regulated by statute. Tier 2 would be those that produce data similar to other regulated American sources. Tier 2’s only added restriction over Tier 1 is that companies were required to get official permission before releasing images of artificial space objects. 

Tier 3 companies, however, are those where a licensee “has no competitors, foreign or domestic” in its sensing ability—those that are at the top of their class with “completely novel capability.” Because of those unmatched capabilities, this tier was (and still is) required to comply with “limited-operations directives”. These directives heavily restricted the quality of their imaging and the things they could image.  

The details of these license restrictions are unclear, possibly secret—but key licensees that are presumably in this tier include well-known companies like BlackSky, Capella Space, Loft Orbital, Planet Labs, Pixxel, and even ICEYE through its ICEYE US subsidiary.

Expiration

That said, these restrictions were all made to be temporary. According to the 2020 rule changes, the goal was never “restricting the capabilities of US private remote sensing systems indefinitely.” It was, instead, “intended to provide the US government time to adopt measures to mitigate the harm.” Indefinite restrictions were doomed to fail, they concluded, as “new technology … in time, is likely to spread to foreign operators.” 

Time has passed, and many of those temporary restrictions have now expired. The Commerce Department’s announcement said that the earliest Tier 3 conditions “permanently expired,” and the NOAA also modified many licenses “to remove 39 individual temporary conditions.” The Commerce Department said that other changes included “a reduction of global imaging restrictions … to permit imaging and distribution for all but less than 1% of the Earth’s surface.” And, “most notably,” in its own words, “a removal of all current X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar temporary conditions.” 

When contacted by SpaceRef, SAR company Capella Space said it had no comment at the present time. Umbra Space, however, publicly hailed the news, announcing that it’s “now able to provide customers with the highest-quality data its satellites are capable of capturing — in all formats and resolutions, including complex data better than 25 cm, for the first time.” Umbra included 16 cm SAR imagery in its announcement, calling it “the highest-resolution commercial satellite image ever released.”

(Umbra Space also announced that they’ve been selected for AFWERX for an SBIR Phase II Contract. Check out the release here on SpaceRef.)

Gabe Dominocielo, Umbra’s co-founder and president, was quoted by Umbra as saying that “the removal of the temporary license conditions by NOAA is impactful news for both Umbra and our customers,” adding it will be “setting the stage for even further expansion of products to customers.” 

These changes to Umbra’s offerings may be impactful to non-customers as well. Umbra releases its imagery with a Creative Commons license, allowing others to reproduce and distribute its imagery as they see fit, so long as Umbra is credited. In turn, the Umbra announcement also highlighted its participation in the Open Data Program (ODP), and how it had released “over $1 million of free SAR data” into ODP. Umbra said that, after the announcement, “they’ve already added 25-cm imagery with the newly unlocked phase history data” into the ODP. 

(SpaceRef readers can check out the new imagery here, though opening the two-gigabyte image files may be difficult on mobile devices.)

With this announcement, then, American earth observation companies will be in a much better position in the commercial industry, as loosening the prior restrictions will bolster American companies’ ability to compete with their international counterparts. They are now that much less reliant on US government customers, likely improving performance in the sector over the coming years. This will likely reinforce calls to reexamine other notorious restrictions in the commercial space sector, such as ITARS, which is consistently named as a barrier for companies pursuing promising customers and top talent.