The US company Maxar Technologies, which is one of the world’s largest private operators of optical Earth monitoring satellites, has stopped providing Ukraine with access to the images obtained by its satellites. Its representatives refer to the decision of the U.S. government.
Closure of access for satellite data for Ukraine
The US company Maxar Technologies has closed access to satellite images of its vehicles for Ukraine. Thus, it severely reduced the state’s intelligence capabilities in the face of a large-scale Russian invasion.
First, the fact that Maxar closed access to its imagery was confirmed in the Cybermook cyber community. And at first it was just about commercial companies restricting access to their data for the defenders of Ukraine, and then the commentary confirmed that it was about Maxar images.
Later, the same information, citing anonymous sources, was confirmed by the Militarnyi portal. At the same time, representatives of the company said it was in response to an “administrative request.”
Why is Maxar Technologies’ imagery so important?
It is worth noting that Maxar Technologies is one of the world’s largest and most important private operators of satellites that survey the Earth’s surface in the optical band. They can rapidly acquire high-resolution images of a specific location in any part of the globe.
Although Maxar Technologies has been operating for many years, it was Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine that made it really famous around the world. The world first saw the multi-kilometer columns of the occupiers on the photos received from their satellites. Since then, the company has repeatedly provided images that confirmed the successes of Ukrainian troops, or highlighted the crimes of the Russians.
But now this ability to effectively conduct satellite reconnaissance and confirm the results of defeats has been lost. It marked the second significant blow to Ukrainian intelligence since the U.S. stopped handing over intelligence gathered by its military on March 5.
According to mil.in.ua
