NASA awards EarthDaily a $3 million task order to link Constellation data with federal land imaging

NASA awarded EarthDaily a task order worth $3 million on Oct. 26, 2026, to link its constellation data with U.S. federal land imaging programs, and EarthDaily announced from Maple Grove, Minnesota.

The announcement came out of Maple Grove, Minnesota, on Oct. 26, 2026, distributed through GlobeNewswire. EarthDaily calls itself a global Earth intelligence company providing science-grade, AI-ready data and analytics. The firm monitors broad areas and detects change.

The task order supports the Sustainable Land Imaging commercial transition initiative. NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey jointly run this effort. The agencies want to know if private capabilities can complement federal systems and meet Landsat continuity needs.

EarthDaily will provide its constellation data and technical support to NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey under the task order. The goal is to evaluate new approaches for bringing commercial capabilities into federal land imaging programs. Funding of $3 million covers technical evaluations. Those evaluations look at how commercial satellite observations can support the initiative and complement the Landsat program’s scientific record alongside the U.S. Geological Survey.

EarthDaily leadership stressed that careful calibration matters for blending commercial data flows into long-term scientific archives. Reviewers will benchmark EarthDaily Constellation data against Landsat standards. They will look at calibration stability, geometric accuracy and radiometric performance.

The agencies will run EarthDaily data through USGS Analysis Ready Data and NASA Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 systems. They want to see if commercial imagery meets Landsat-grade surface reflectance standards. Reviewers will check whether EarthDaily data meets requirements for Landsat-grade surface reflectance. They will also check surface temperature requirements.

NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey will assess data quality, harmonizability and fitness for purpose. They will also review calibration, stability, radiometric performance and geometric performance.

Spacecraft in the constellation gather raw data across 22 spectral bands covering visible and near-infrared light plus short-wave infrared and thermal wavelengths. Water-vapor and cirrus bands handle atmospheric correction and cloud identification. Sensors give native resolution of five meters for visible and near-infrared light, while short-wave infrared reaches 95 meters and thermal infrared reaches 120 meters. The system applies no sharpening to create apparent detail.

EarthDaily says its eight in-orbit satellites image 92% of Earth’s landmass daily. The satellites maintain a 240-kilometer swath. They cross the equator at 10:30 a.m. local time. Right now, eight of the planned 10 EarthDaily Constellation satellites fly in sun-synchronous orbit (passing over each point at the same local solar time).

Other sources describe the eight orbiting satellites as imaging the full land surface every two days. At full operations, the constellation will image about 92% of Earth’s landmass daily, excluding Antarctica.

The constellation’s coordinated design yields science-grade, analysis-ready observations. You can compare these observations directly from one collection to the next.

EarthDaily will check how well the data trains artificial intelligence foundation models. The work draws on capabilities from EarthDaily Analytics’ acquisition of Descartes Labs. It expands machine-learning workflows for broad-area environmental analytics.

NASA is expanding superintelligence use for scientific research and complex dataset analysis. This task order supports that direction. Examples include Earth observation foundation models trained on decades of Landsat imagery. Other examples cover uses in reanalysis and forecasting.

EarthDaily Chief Executive Officer Don Osborne stated that Landsat created an extraordinary scientific record. The record rests on decades of consistent and trusted measurement. He added that EarthDaily grew from one idea. Understanding change requires measurements that can be trusted and compared over time.

Don Osborne said, «As Earth observation increasingly becomes an input to AI, that consistency becomes even more important.» The company pledges to work with NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. They will preserve Landsat’s invaluable continuous record. It covers more than 50 years.

The record remains freely and openly available to users around the world. Harmonized observations might lengthen the Landsat archive forward through more frequent measurements.

Its integrated system joins the purpose-built EarthDaily Constellation with advanced data processing. It also uses AI foundation models and domain-specific analytics. The system turns large-scale environmental observations into decision-ready intelligence. The company’s capabilities support critical applications including farming, insurance, mining, forestry, environmental monitoring, defense and national security.

EarthDaily technical teams and NASA and U.S. Geological Survey program leads will hold regular exchanges. They will cover data quality, cross-calibration, algorithms, product specifications, processing workflows and data integration. Joint reviews will happen as work advances. The results will shape product and documentation refinements.

Joint experiments will cover data evaluation, workflow demonstrations and product checks. They will cover validation, standardized data structures and uncertainty characterization.

The study will examine fit with long-term land imaging records. It will ask whether commercial observations can raise revisit frequency (how often a satellite passes over the same point). It will also ask whether they can sharpen spatial resolution alongside government Earth observation systems.

Furthermore, it will identify and refine requirements. Commercial capabilities and derived products must satisfy these requirements to harmonize with the Landsat archive. Reviewers will judge whether the capabilities can add to Landsat. They will look at more frequent observations for users requiring consistent change measurements between acquisitions.

If validation succeeds, it will lay groundwork for hybrid mission architectures. These pair government-owned satellites with commercial constellations. Showing that EarthDaily data meets Landsat-aligned performance thresholds would begin the move. The move leads to hybrid government and commercial mission architectures.