Washington Dulles International Airport in the context of "Downtown (Washington, D.C.)"

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government. It provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the National Security Agency (NSA), imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The NRO announced in 2023 that it plans within the following decade to quadruple the number of satellites it operates and increase the number of signals and images it delivers by a factor of ten.

NRO is considered, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSA, DIA, and NGA, to be one of the "big five" U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRO is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Washington Dulles International Airport.

A gate is an area in an airport terminal that controls access to a passenger aircraft. While the exact specifications vary from airport to airport and country to country, most gates consist of a seated waiting area, a counter and a doorway leading to the aircraft. A gate adjacent to the stand where the aircraft is parked may be a contact gate, providing access by way of a jet bridge, or a ground-loaded gate, providing a path for passengers to leave the building to board via mobile stairs or airstairs built into the aircraft itself. A remote stand serves an aircraft stand further away, providing access to ground transportation to move passengers between the gate and the stand, where they board via stairs.

Each gate typically corresponds to one parking stand on the airport's apron. A gate that provides access to multiple stands/jet bridges may have separate, designated doorways – sometimes termed sub-gates – for each stand. Commercial airport stands have airside components to facilitate passenger boarding and aircraft ground handling.