The National Reconnaissance Office on Friday awarded a second contract to Albedo Space, a Broomfield-based earth imaging company. Albedo’s Clarity-1 satellite is the first commercial satellite purpose-built to work in very low earth orbit and can take pictures with unparalleled resolution, according to the company.

The new award allows the NRO to buy imagery from Albedo’s satellite, which offers a 10 cm resolution. This means every pixel of an image taken by Clarity-1 equals 10 cm on the ground, previously a resolution only attainable by aircraft, drones and classified spy satellites.

Clarity-1 started its space-based life in low earth orbit. After its commissioning, onboard thrusters fired, and Clarity descended to very low earth orbit. It is currently orbiting at an altitude below 270 miles. This greatly improves imaging across many sectors, including defense, agriculture and real estate, according to the company’s advertising.

Clarity-1 launched in March.

The latest contract also entrenches a partnership between the NRO and Albedo, which company officials said will help deliver its pictures to U.S. defense and intelligence services.

“This award gives us a critical opportunity to demonstrate what (very low earth orbit) can offer in terms of performance, revisit, and resilience,” said Topher Haddad, CEO and Co-founder, in a news release. “It reflects the hard work of our team and partnership with (the NRO). It’s a key step toward delivering (National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scale) 7-class imagery to U.S. government users, and it affirms the role of VLEO as a vital new orbital layer for space-based resiliency.”

Stage two awardees, which included Albedo Space, Muon Space and Turion Space all received $900,000 as part of the contract, according to an NRO spokesperson. Earlier this year, Albedo was awarded a separate contract by the U.S. Air Force worth up to $12 million.

The NRO evaluation process is two stages. The first is an analytical study to “estimate system performance,” plan for business operations and cybersecurity, the spokesperson added. Stage two is a dress rehearsal for the hardware. 

Space-based resiliency is, broadly speaking, the ability of a satellite to continue operations in any environment, regardless of how contested its space becomes, according to several definitions from the Space Force, BAE Systems and other defense contractors.

The second stage contract award allows the NRO to assess Clarity-1’s capability as it orbits the earth, according to the release. Two years ago, when Albedo was first awarded a contract from the NRO, Haddad was confident in his company’s ability to deliver for the NRO and commercial partners.

“Our satellites are designed to be highly taskable and are well suited for ad-hoc tasking requests. Our future rapid revisit, on-demand tasking, and tailored collection areas will support many intelligence applications,” Haddad said.