Jason Andrews, Board Member & President of Geospatial Division at NEO Space Group talks about the evolving Geospatial landscape and NSG’s future strategy
The Journey at NEO Space Group
My journey with the National Space Company – publicly branded as the NEO Space Group (NSG) started back in 2022. Since then, it has been a remarkable two-year journey alongside fellow board members to bring Martijn Blanken on board as CEO and assemble the initial leadership team. I’ve also temporarily stepped into an operational role to help establish the geospatial division.
As a founder of multiple space companies, my background has proven valuable especially during this formative stage of NSG’s development. Just around a year ago, we appointed our CEO Martijn Blanken, and since then we’ve hired 85 new employees and completed acquisitions that have grown our total team to nearly 600 people. Today, NSG consists of three business units: one focused on satellite communications, another on Earth observation and geospatial technologies, and a future-facing unit dedicated to IoT, positioning, navigation, and timing.
As part of building this organization, I led the geospatial unit-defining its initial strategy and growth plan. We integrated our first acquisition —Taqnia-ETS, now My experience has been instrumental in shaping NSG’s strategic planning, early execution, and team – building efforts during this exciting phase of growth.
The Evolution of Geospatial
Historically, geospatial firms have focused on selling satellite imagery. But what customers really need are insights. Militaries and governments have developed entire organizations to convert satellite images into actionable intelligence. In contrast, most corporations aren’t looking to buy images — they want answers that help them operate their businesses more effectively and efficiently.
This disconnect has been a major barrier to industry growth. Many companies focus solely on capturing images, while others specialize in processing and interpreting them. Very few do both or offer an end–to–end solution. Today, deriving answers often requires fusing multiple data types: visible imagery, radar data, RF overlays, and more – tasks that have historically been siloed across different organizations.
At NEO Space Group, we aim to bridge this gap by developing a platform that provides seamless access to a wide range of image types through a single interface. Our goal is to simplify both access and analysis, helping to the adoption of geospatial solutions across industries. We’re also laying the foundation for AI-powered platforms capable of delivering insights at scale and lower costs, making geospatial intelligence more accessible, actionable, and impactful than ever before.
How Geospatial Insights Can Drive Industry Change
Creating a geospatial pipeline involves addressing and solving three main challenges, which I’ll outline from the downstream perspective.
Ultimately, the goal is to deliver actionable insights. Traditionally, this has required extensive manual effort: capturing imagery, interpreting it generating reports, and delivering them to clients. But the future lies in automation. Our aim is to develop answers automatically, starting with a clearly defined problem and building a pipeline powered by APIs and AI algorithms.
Bridging the Gap
Our marketplace functions as a neutral, third-party platform that allows users to task imagery and automatically run it through an analysis pipeline to generate insights. For instance, maritime domain awareness might require the integration of radar imagery with RF and electro-optical data, all synchronized in time to produce actionable results.
Ideally, users in our marketplace will operate in a no-code environment. They’ll select the algorithms, imagery, and timelines they need, and the system will process everything automatically to produce answers.
This will mark a significant leap forward, unlocking a wide range of new geospatial applications. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the ongoing construction boom presents immense opportunity.
Saudi Vision 2030
Under Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is investing an estimated $100 billion annually on giga-projects. Improving construction efficiency by just 1% through geospatial intelligence could yield savings of $1 billion—more than enough to justify significant investment in satellite imagery and downstream analytics. That’s just one example of the value geospatial insights can unlock.
Technological Advancements
Today, we’re seeing the convergence of three transformative trends:
1. Sensor Proliferation and Capability: The number and performance of space-based sensors have increased dramatically. As an example, BlackSky—the company I founded—started with one-meter resolution imagery. Its next-generation satellites now deliver 35-centimeter resolution, enabling detailed monitoring of small structures and objects, such as distinguishing a car from a truck.
2. Cloud Computing Affordability: The falling cost of cloud computing has made it feasible to process massive datasets, allowing organizations to handle larger volumes of data more cost effectively.
3. Advances in AI and Machine Learning: With higher-resolution imagery and the rise of large language models, we can now automate complex workflows that once required teams of analysts days or weeks. These processes can now be completed in minutes.
Together, these trends unlock new business opportunities—from construction monitoring to municipal planning. We are now over a decade into the small satellite revolution, and it has matured from a disruptive phase into one of scalable, reliable operations.
Moving Forward
Small satellite companies are reaching operational scale, and data has never been more accessible. At NSG, our go-to-market strategy begins with solving the “answers” problem through our geospatial services business.
We’re building a high-throughput data factory capable of ingesting vast amounts of geospatial data and automatically processing it to create valuable datasets—such as foundational maps or digital twins of urban regions. Imagine having an up-to-date digital twin of Los Angeles after wildfires. That could benefit insurers, government agencies, construction firms, and urban planners alike.
We’re starting at the downstream level. With our marketplace, we also cover the midstream capabilities – automatically tasking satellites to supply data to our systems and clients.
Looking ahead, we are evaluating the acquisition of our own geospatial assets. The answer is likely yes—to increase sovereignty, national resilience, and guaranteed data access.
However, we’re not aiming to compete with existing satellite data suppliers. Instead, we’re pursuing innovative business models that foster win-to-win outcomes: supporting the ecosystem, supporting the ecosystem, strengthening our marketplace and downstream services, and safeguarding national interests.
