Ramona Adams
Lockheed Martin plans to open access to data from the company-built Space Based Infrared System in efforts to foster the development of remote sensing tools for military and civilian applications.
The company said Wednesday the infrared data will be made available to government, commercial and academic organizations through the U.S. Air Force‘s data utilization laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.
“By giving researchers access to this data, our objective is for them to find new, innovative uses for improving situational awareness—whether it is for tactical military missions, natural disasters or even firefighting,” said David Sheridan, vice president of Lockheed’s overhead persistent infrared systems mission area.
Lt. Col. Ross Johnston of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center said the data utilization lab will work to provide an open framework architecture to accommodate new tools, algorithms and processing methods from users, data consumers and third-party developers.
SBIRS is designed to support national security missions such as missile warning and defense, technical intelligence and battlespace  monitoring operations.
