Spire Global and OroraTech announced a partnership to provide eight global temperature and monitoring satellites for wildfires by 2024. This will become the second collaboration between the company, leveraging both partnerships.
(Photo : TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
TOPSHOT - People walk in Central Park as smoke from wildfires in Canada cause hazy conditions in New York City on June 7, 2023.
Eight Satellite Constellations
Global wildfire losses between the years 2018-2022 are estimated to total $69 billion for affecting property destruction, infrastructure damage, evacuations, health-related expenses, and wider economic losses across the affected businesses related to forestry, energy, and tourism
While the government pours into fighting the recent wildfires that happened in the past few months, first responders still need to detect real-time wildfires and monitor data. According to a report from TechCrunch, OroraTech and Spire Global will launch a group of wildfire-monitoring satellites. This will identify active wildfires and areas at risk, significantly since these incidents are increasing day by day due to climate change.
Each spacecraft that will be launched next year, will carry OroraTech's proprietary thermal-infrared optical payload and data processing unit with on-orbit fire detection capability. Through Spires' ground station network, urgent data will be collected by the satellites and will be delivered to OroraTech through an API.
Not only that the responders will benefit from this collaboration, but also the insurance and energy sectors. Detection of wildfire hot spots will also be identified through the satellites, which comes as perfect timing as it rapidly increases due to climate change. For only 15 months, Spire was able to design and operate OroraTech's precursor sensor in orbit successfully.
The collaboration between the two companies will be considered as Space News reported that Spire's Space-as-a-Service subscription model that will let participating organizations rapidly operate payloads in space using the company's existing services and spacecraft.
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OroraTech Chief Commercial Officer Dr. Axel Roenneke described the model as "invaluable" for helping the company rapidly reach space, which made a lot of sense for other startup companies who may not have a capital or business interest when it comes to developing their own spacecraft, operations, and ground infrastructure.
"By continuously monitoring the Earth's temperature, customers, like fire-fighting agencies, forestry and utility companies, are provided with real-time detection capability, continuous situational awareness as well as predictive insights to maintain control of wildfires," the Chief added.
Operating Across the Globe
Bloomberg reported that through the technology demonstration, it exceeded expectations and now serves as an active fire monitoring device for customers around the world. SOPFEU or Quebec's fire agency is currently utilizing the sensor to assist the local agency. Spire is allowing different organizations to innovate Spire's established infrastructure to put their business in space.
For OroraTech, this is not the company's first collaboration as they worked together to quickly validate the initial concept for the FOREST or Forest Observation & Recognition Experimental Smallsat Thermal Detector. Spire Global and OroraTech were also awarded by the Canadian Space Agency last May for a dedicated wild-life monitoring satellite.
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