An Anchorage firm will guard a federal satellite archive in South Dakota

An Anchorage company owned by Ahtna Athabascan shareholders will guard a federal satellite data center in South Dakota for the next five years.

The U.S. Geological Survey awarded Ahtna Logistics $1,684,028 for security at its Earth Resources Observation and Science Center outside Sioux Falls, the facility that archives and distributes the Landsat satellite record. The work starts Sept. 1 and runs through August 2031: round-the-clock coverage, guard posts, patrols, emergency response and property control. The award record does not say how many guards that buys.

Ahtna Logistics is a subsidiary of Ahtna, Inc., the regional corporation for the Copper River country, based in Glennallen and owned by more than 2,000 shareholders, most of them Ahtna Athabascan. Jason McCart is president.

The Geological Survey set the work aside for small disadvantaged businesses and received four offers. It last contracted security at the center in 2021.

Federal records list 21 awards to Ahtna Logistics worth $69.3 million since 2020. Nine of them, worth $34.2 million, are performed in Alaska, including artillery and chemical training support, base labor and contractor logistics.