GEOSPATIAL FRONTIERS
A Publication by Project Geospatial
LOOKING BEYOND
THE MAP
Geospatial Frontiers, a new publication from Project Geospatial, brings together leading voices and experts from across the geospatial ecosystem to tackle the industry's most pressing challenges. Through in-depth articles and discussions, Geospatial Frontiers aims to explore innovative solutions and spark critical conversations that will shape the future of geospatial technology and its applications.
Contributing Authors
The New Contested Domain: Security, Legal, and Financial Implications of Commercial Satellites as Military Targets
Discover how the integration of commercial satellites into modern military operations has transformed Earth's orbit into an active battlefield. This comprehensive analysis of the Commercial Satellite Protection and Liability file explores the unprecedented security, legal, and financial fallout of co-orbital maneuvering and "maneuver kills" by hostile states. Learn why standard commercial space insurance fails to cover acts of war and how urgent government procurement frameworks, such as the Space Force's Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) and Public Law 85-804 indemnification, are essential to protect critical private infrastructure from state-sponsored targeting.
The Commercial GEOINT Acquisition Gap
As the U.S. government deepens its reliance on commercial satellite imagery, growing tensions between federal GEOINT procurement, national security priorities, and commercial independence are raising important questions about the industry's future. Congressional scrutiny of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) reveals persistent challenges involving acquisition flexibility, funding, interagency coordination, and access to commercial geospatial intelligence. Project Geospatial examines the evolution of government satellite imagery contracts, the emerging commercial GEOINT marketplace, and the double-edged sword of federal investment: an industry empowered by government demand yet increasingly shaped by government control. As new satellite technologies transform Earth observation, can Washington's acquisition system keep pace while preserving innovation, competition, and commercial autonomy?
The Landsat Commercial Transition: The Hard Part Is Making the Economics Work
NASA and the USGS are preparing for a historic shift: transitioning the Landsat program to rely on commercial Earth observation data by 2035. But as the Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) Commercial Transition Initiative moves forward, it revives a decades-old question: what happens when a foundational public science mission is forced to operate under commercial economics? Explore the complex history of Landsat commercialization, the downstream economic value of free and open-access imagery, and the geopolitical risks of relying on the "New Space" market to sustain a 50-year scientific record.
The Evolution of Commercial Satellite Imagery in the U.S. Government
Commercial satellite imagery has evolved from a tightly controlled national-security capability into a foundational layer of the modern U.S. geospatial intelligence architecture. This historical overview traces that transformation from Landsat, EOSAT, Eagle Vision, and the early commercialization experiments through ClearView, NextView, EnhancedView, EOCL, and today’s expanding commercial sensing ecosystem of optical imagery, SAR, hyperspectral, radio frequency, AI, and analytics. It also examines the policymakers, intelligence leaders, scientists, companies, and acquisition strategies that helped build the government-commercial partnership—and the emerging 2026 debate over access, managed distribution, national security, and how the United States governs an increasingly global and commercially driven GEOINT environment.