16/01/2019 | Return to Latest News

In September 2018, C-CORE kicked off a new project, Modelling the Geospatial Intelligence Capability to Support Canadian Surveillance and Sovereignty (MISSUS). This project brings C-CORE together with the Department of National Defence (DND) to demonstrate the overall value and feasibility of integrating commercial GEOspatial INTelligence (GEOINT) systems into their concept of operations. MISSUS will examine the spatio-temporal aspects of acquiring, downlinking and analyzing satellite imagery to extract target data and analytics relevant to DND.

Both land and maritime based military scenarios will be studied to determine how government owned satellites, such as Canada’s RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM), might work in combination with commercial satellite missions and ground satellite receiving stations. MISSUS will also consider new mechanisms and technology for accessing and processing imagery that should result in a compressed Tasking, Collection, Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination (TCPED) cycle.

MISSUS will first involve a complete review of emerging GEOINT capabilities and infrastructure, followed by the development of models of GEOINT acquisition using Systems Tool Kit from Analytical Graphics, Inc. The study will involve determining the capabilities of ground stations and communications links to process and transmit the GEOINT to DND decision makers. The C‑CORE owned satellite ground receiving station in Inuvik, NWT will be a significant element to this study. The models will include capabilities of various ground segments, existing and emerging, and will determine the practical aspects of downlinking the data in near real time to product data analytics.

The outcome of this study will be recommendations on the integration of GEOINT within DND operations. MISSUS has the potential to contribute to capital projects such as the Defence Enhanced Surveillance from Space (DESSP) and RCM-based surveillance programs, such as Polar Epsilon 2.

This is a 2-year contract valued at $1,880,000 to be cost-shared between C-CORE and the federal government.