The National Reconnaissance Office has modified a 10-year Electro-Optical Commercial Layer contract it awarded to Maxar Technologies last year in order to give the U.S. government long-term access to digital elevation models of the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
The changes support NRO’s agreement with the National Science Foundation and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to continue allowing public access to 3D models, which are vital in climate change research, NSF said Thursday.
The recently finalized pact among the three organizations is positioned to enable NGA to share the imaging simulations with NSF’s university partners, which will update the NSF’s ArcticDEM and Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica projects until 2032.
Researchers will be gain access o the digital simulations on NGA’s website, as well as the NSF Polar Geospatial Center site operated by the University of Minnesota.