BlackSky Technology Inc. (NYSE: BKSY) received a $4.4 million award from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to support the second phase of the multi-year Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique (SMART) Program.
“As part of our work, BlackSky created a high-performance MLOps (machine learning operations) framework that was ultimately selected to perform as the core infrastructure to the entire SMART program,” said Patrick O’Neil, BlackSky chief innovation officer.
“The MLOps framework will extend BlackSky’s Spectra AI tasking and analytics capabilities and accelerate the development of SMART technologies that make quick sense of the immense volume and complexity of space-based image data,” O’Neil added.
The SMART program aims to automate the quantitative analysis of space-based imagery to perform broad-area searches for natural and man-made events using time-series imagery. Under the program BlackSky has developed both supervised and semi-supervised machine learning algorithms to automatically recognize heavy construction projects such as military bases, stadiums, campuses, dams, and airports.
