Task Umbra SAR in Vantor Hub: WorldView™ Radar is now in beta

When the mission clock is running, “wait for clear skies” isn’t a plan.

Cloud cover, smoke, haze, nightfall—these are exactly the conditions that create intelligence gaps at the worst possible time. And in many workflows today, closing those gaps means switching tools, switching vendors, switching ordering processes, and stitching outputs together by hand.

Today, we’re changing that.

We’re launching WorldView Radar—our Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) tasking product enabled by our partnership with Umbra—in Vantor Hub in beta, making SAR collections self-serve in Hub for the first time. Until now, WorldView Radar has been available primarily through integrated customer programs, with orders placed through Vantor operators. With this beta launch, participating customers can task SAR directly in Hub: no email thread, no handoffs, no delay.

This is an important step toward what we believe modern ISR demands: a single pane of glass for multi-sensor tasking and collection, grounded in an operational system that reduces latency and friction without sacrificing the rigor, reliability, and control defense, intelligence, and commercial teams require.

How SAR tasking works in Hub

WorldView Radar uses the same intuitive tasking workflow as WorldView 2D. The workflow follows four simple steps designed to minimize friction and move orders into execution quickly:

1. Define your area of interest: Select a point target directly within Hub using the same general interface you already use for EO tasking, or center point can be automatically extracted from saved Areas. A 5 km x 5 km scene around that center point will be delivered.
2. Choose your collection parameters: More details on these parameters below. For most users new to SAR, we recommend 50–35 cm resolution and Medium Dwell to balance access opportunities and image clarity.
3. Submit, track, and receive: Once submitted, the order moves directly into the system. Deliverables are available through standard Hub delivery mechanisms and accessible via the Orders Manager.

That’s it. Just a few clicks, and the order is live.

What you can task in WorldView Radar

WorldView Radar provides Spotlight SAR tasking optimized for point targets with 5 km x 5 km collections—delivering day/night, all-weather imaging that can fill collection gaps when EO is unavailable. When submitting tasking orders, customers can choose from four ground-projected resolution options:

• 1 m
• 50 cm
• 35 cm
• 25 cm

WorldView Radar also includes three dwell duration options:

• Single look (highest speckle; enables collection of the most targets per pass)
• Medium dwell
• Long dwell (longest Umbra collection time; best detectability of partially obscured objects and strongest speckle reduction)

For teams that care about the details: dwell time impacts along-track, or azimuth axis, native complex image resolution, delivering approximately 12.5 cm native azimuth resolution for medium dwell and ~6–8 cm resolution for long dwell. That additional information is then multi-look processed, resulting in a square pixel at the tasked ground resolution (e.g., 50 cm or 35 cm). Because of this longer collection duration with dwell, data is collected over a larger set of azimuth angles, which also increases the likelihood of good SAR signal reflection off of objects of interest, improving detectability, particularly if objects are partially obscured such as under light tree cover.

One note: SAR is extremely powerful, but it can also be more difficult to interpret than EO without expertise, especially in complex scenes. That's why SAR is most impactful at reducing ambiguity when paired with EO. Anchored to Vantor's high-resolution, highly accurate spatial foundation, SAR provides persistent, all-weather detection, and EO provides the visual context to understand what you’re actually seeing, which is exactly why Vantor’s single pane of glass experience is important.

Why this all matters: operational tempo, not “feature access” We’ve been investing heavily in making tasking feel like modern operational software—self-serve ordering, feasibility transparency, and a workflow built for speed. Adding seamless SAR tasking isn’t just “one more thing in the catalog.”

For operational teams, it influences three things that matter every day:

1. It reduces ordering latency when minutes matter: The difference between self-serve tasking and “send an email and wait for someone to place the order” is more than convenience, it’s tempo. In the beta workflow, customers can submit SAR tasking immediately (any time of day) so the order enters the system as quickly as possible. In time-sensitive missions, that speed compounds into faster requests, faster confirmation, faster execution, and faster downstream exploitation.
2. It keeps EO and SAR in one operational workflow: SAR is most valuable when it’s not a “separate radar program,” but a first-class part of the same mission workflow as electro-optical (EO) imagery. In Hub, WorldView Radar will live alongside WorldView 2D tasking, supporting a unified operator experience for multi-sensor missions. That matters because real missions are inherently multi-sensor: teams need to task different phenomenologies quickly and then integrate them into analysis pipelines without building a new workflow every time conditions change.
3. It advances our virtual constellation, which is built for integrated missions: WorldView Radar is powered through our partnership with Umbra, providing commercial SAR Spotlight tasking as part of Vantor’s growing virtual constellation. The operational intent is straightforward: bring complementary sensors into a unified tasking and delivery system so customers can plan missions based on capability, not on which vendor happens to provide it today.

Here are a few examples of how WorldView™ Radar in Hub changes mission outcomes:

• Countering denial and deception in contested environments: Adversaries increasingly rely on camouflage, netting, and decoys to obscure true operational activity. SAR penetrates cloud cover and many forms of fabric or netting, helping analysts detect concealed assets and distinguish decoys (think wood or air-filled mockups) from real vehicles, aircraft, and equipment.
• Monitoring threats through cloud cover: A defense team monitoring activity at a remote airfield detects increased logistical movement, but a weather front moves in. With SAR in Hub, the team can immediately task radar to detect aircraft presence or absence, identify newly positioned ground equipment, or confirm activity patterns despite cloud cover or darkness.
• Disaster response in degraded environments: After a volcanic eruption, wildfire, or hurricane, smoke, clouds, and ash can obscure ground visibility. SAR enables responders to assess structural damage through cloud or smoke, detect infrastructure washouts, identify new debris fields or landslides, and monitor flooding even under heavy weather conditions.
• Time-sensitive mission planning and change detection: For intelligence teams conducting pattern-of-life analysis or mission planning workflows, SAR adds a critical layer of resilience. It can detect new equipment placements, monitor vehicle presence in denied areas, and understand changing conditions on the ground.

Because SAR tasking now lives in the same workflow as EO, operators can pivot instantly without switching tools or vendors. Integrating WorldView Radar into Vantor Hub isn’t serving the role of a marketplace. It’s an integrated tasking system built for outcomes.

Our approach is to integrate tasking into the platform experience so customers come in with a requirement—“I need SAR” or “I need EO”—and the workflow is consistent regardless of which provider fulfills that requirement now or in the future. For customers using APIs, they integrate tasking of Vantor sensors and Umbra sensors through one connection point, rather than building and maintaining multiple vendor integrations.

And it’s where we’re going next: a world where you can place one order and Vantor’s intuitive system will determine the best collection plan—EO if clear, SAR if cloudy—based on access opportunities, constraints, weather forecasts, and mission need.

Join the beta

WorldView™ Radar in Vantor Hub is launching in beta now, with broader rollout expected in the second half of 2026.

To join the beta, contact your Vantor sales representative.