Expanding on the original agreement, the Stage II award allows NRO to perform on-orbit assessments and acquire Hydrosat's advanced infrared data

WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / July 21, 2025 / Hydrosat, a company leveraging thermal satellite data and AI to address critical global challenges in food production, security, and natural resource management, announced today that it has been awarded a Stage II contract from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). This award grants the agency access to Hydrosat's latest thermal infrared data.

The NRO awarded Hydrosat a Stage I contract for modeling and simulation activities under the Strategic Commercial Enhancements (SCE) program in December 2023. The new contract will allow the NRO to perform on-orbit assessments and acquire thermal infrared and electro-optical infrared (EO/IR) data from Hydrosat's first two satellite missions, VanZyl-1 and VanZyl-2.

"This award allows us to deliver Hydrosat's unique thermal infrared satellite imagery to the NRO and partners across the U.S. defense and intelligence sector," said Pieter Fossel, CEO of Hydrosat. "The award is a testament to the hard work of our team and NRO partners in successfully completing our Stage I milestones, and to the growing demand for Hydrosat's satellite imagery from across the community."

The NRO's SCE program onboards new and emerging commercial data providers for evaluation and use across the defense and intelligence community. This program includes electro-optical, radar, radio frequency, and hyperspectral in addition to infrared data.

"This NRO contract paves the way for Hydrosat to deliver thermal infrared satellite data at a greater scale to customers across the United States government," said Scott Soenen, CTO of Hydrosat. "We could not be more excited to make it easier for our customers to access thermal insights at a larger capacity and higher velocity than has been available to date."

Hydrosat's thermal infrared imagery is valuable for defense and intelligence use cases, such as detecting industrial activity, tracking ships at night, and identifying signs of new infrastructure construction. It also enables daily, high-frequency access to sub-field-scale temperature insights.

Hydrosat's core commercial applications include monitoring vegetation health, optimizing irrigation, measuring agricultural water productivity, and detecting droughts. Its satellite constellation is uniquely capable of collecting thermal imagery of over more than 10 million km² per day, an order of magnitude greater than any other commercial solution at a comparable resolution. This approach allows Hydrosat satellites to continuously collect machine-readable surface temperature data and deliver it primed for various AI applications.

Hydrosat's VanZyl-1 mission was launched on SpaceX's Transporter-11 in August 2024. That mission is being operated in partnership with Loft Orbital. The company's second satellite, VanZyl-2, launched aboard SpaceX's Transporter-14 mission and is operated in collaboration with Muon Space.

For more information, visit https://hydrosat.com/.

About Hydrosat

Hydrosat leverages thermal satellite data and AI to address critical global challenges in food production, security, and natural resource management. Hydrosat currently monitors millions of acres for customers such as NOAA, NRO, Bayer, SupPlant, and Nutradrip, who trust the company's high-resolution, timely satellite thermal imagery to deliver advanced analytics that convey precise crop yield forecasts and improved irrigation tools to agricultural, commercial, and public sector customers around the globe.

Press Contacts:

Christine Vlachou
Marketing & Communications Manager, Hydrosat
marketing@hydrosat.com

SOURCE: Hydrosat