DigitalGlobe announced that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded the company a sole-source contract for high-resolution commercial electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery valued at up to $7 million. NASA-funded researchers will use this data to advance the agency's science and application development goals to understand and explore Earth, improve lives, and safeguard future. This one-year blanket purchase agreement includes four option years. Under this contract, NASA is able to purchase a variety of DigitalGlobe data and services, including DigitalGlobe's 18-year, 100-petabyte imagery library, new imagery collected by its WorldView constellation, analytics on the company's Geospatial Big Data (GBDX) platform and RADARSAT-2 SAR imagery from MDA, another Maxar company. DigitalGlobe's WorldView constellation includes sensors that collect near infrared imagery, providing information about plant health; shortwave infrared imagery, which identifies materials, detects heat and sees through smoke; and an instrument known as CAVIS, which corrects inconsistencies caused by clouds, aerosols, water vapor, ice and snow. MDA's RADARSAT-2 satellite allows users to observe features and changes regardless of weather or time of day. NASA's Earth Science Division is evaluating how Maxar's DigitalGlobe and MDA commercial data can augment or supplement the data from its own aging fleet of orbiting Earth science missions. DigitalGlobe's partnership with NASA extends back to 2001, during which time the two organizations have worked on Earth science research through the NASA Scientific Data Purchase Program and Earth monitoring, imaging and mapping to help improve environmental decision-making among developing nations through the SERVIR Program.