PROTELUM

Objectives of the Product

Operative, infrastructural, and environmental safety are key priorities at mine sites. Mine operators and regulators need to systematically identify risks inherent to underground and surface operations on a continuous basis. The industry needs to employ technologies that can ensure the ongoing operation of critical controls, to generate insights regarding the effectiveness of mining operations to date. Monitoring technologies employed in mine installations tend to be bespoke, siloed solutions that require significant “human-in-the-loop” resources and manual data analysis.

The Protelum solution leverages Davra’s industry-leading IoT platform to consolidate all data sources by combining data from legacy data silos into a single unified data source. This allows cross-pollination between data sources facilitating analytical methodologies on combined datasets.

Customers and their Needs:

There are common thematic problems in managing mines that require continuous, iterative monitoring and management, specifically in the areas of water management, ground stability and environmental impact monitoring. The industry needs solutions that can work with hard and soft sensors and other monitoring technologies to provide continuous assurance of critical processes with less reliance on physical data capture and manual processing. Monitoring processes are important to industry and public stakeholders alike and are coming under increased social scrutiny and regulatory control. There is no “single pane of glass” mine management system that can collate hard and soft operational data, blend the data multi-modally with satellite, Earth observation (EO) and GNSS data and apply AI and machine learning to deliver key operational metrics and actionable insights. The PROTELUM project aims to deliver such a system.

Target customers/users’ countries

The target customers are as follows:

Mine owners/operators
Mine regulators/insurance companies
People who live and work in the vicinity of mine sites (active and inactive)

The solution targets the global Mining Industry.

Product Description:

Davra is developing a cloud-based platform to monitor and manage mine tailings storage facilities (TSFs). The solution merges EO, drone and LIDAR data with available terrestrial data to show changes in the TSFs in order to manage its safety and to forecast potential physical breaches or environmental regulation breaches. It is the aim of the project that the solution developed under the activity can be used globally in a variety of mining environments.

The solution is being designed to meet the ICMM regulation for TSF monitoring. The collection of data from multiple sources and the associated classification of this data in terms of compliance and risk management ensures the solution will fit with the “good engineering practices for tailings management” as defined by the ICMM. Data is validated from its source and the system provides GDPR and ISO 27001 data security compliance.

Added Value:

In terms of automating mine TSFs, Petroleum can employ interferometric SAR in the analysis of TSFs tailings beachheads and general ground stability. This data when linked to GNSS referenced LIDAR and other terrestrial data offers a means of analysing live data and developing predictive models, which can be used to ascertain regulatory and environmental compliance.

Increased Operational Efficiency: Protelum’s innovative data management platform creates better ways to manage, store and make sense of mining data. AI, machine learning and machine vision technology generates day-to-day data that can provide actionable insights in shorter time frames. Smart data and machine learning allows for better planning and resource management, and can be used to improve operational efficiency, production workflow and mine safety.

Reduced Costs: Using the latest cutting-edge satellite and imaging technology provides the ability to manage the TSF locations without the need for cost-intensive ground truth inspections. By providing geoscientific images in a programmatic manner, both travel and inspection costs are reduced.

Increased Sustainability: Mining can be an environmentally destructive process when managed incorrectly. EO and IoT data can aid the development of environmentally friendly mineral processing.

Safety Ensured: Protelum can also be used to provide non-TSF metrics such as air quality, fire and explosion risks has been augmented by current spatial data visualization like 3D modelling, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (VR). They provide mine management with the ability to view a mine remotely, but as if they were onsite. This allows them to plan for any safety concerns by allowing managers to experience working in a mine or developing a new mine without being in the field.

Current Status:

The project commenced on 23 August 2022, with milestone #1 occurring on 28 February 2023.

SPACE4ATLANTIC

Objectives of the Product

The Atlantic Ocean stretches from the Artic Circle to Antarctica and is bordered by the American Continent to the west and by Europe and Africa to the east. For centuries, the Atlantic Ocean has been a key avenue of economic activity, trade and travel with fisheries in particular for the European Continent where two-thirds of the borders are coastal and maritime spaces. Furthermore, 40% of EU GDP is generated in coastal regions and 75% of the volume of external commercial transactions takes place over maritime routes and, the “Blue Economy” (taken to mean all economic activities related to oceans, seas and coasts and, as such, covering a wide range of interlinked established and emerging sectors) is estimated to represent about 5.4 million jobs with a resulting Gross Value Added of approximately EUR 500 billion per year. The Atlantic Ocean, being a critical source for Europe of valuable natural resources, needs to be studied, protected and managed. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to monitor the evolution of multiple parameters for these purposes, through data captured from both local and remote sources. Overall, neither current missions nor future Copernicus missions, fulfil simultaneously the needs of maritime domain stakeholders concerning spatial resolution (in the desired range of meters to 10 km), revisit times under 3 hours for selected areas and data latencies consistent with real-time to near real-time analysis, operations and decision making.
SPACE4ATLANTIC’s objective is to fill this gap by deploying an Earth Observation constellation of small satellites focused on addressing the necessities of customers and users of the Atlantic area and contributing for a better understanding and monitoring of the region.

Customers and their Needs

The key customers segments are drawn from the Atlantic area stakeholders that require information to support their operations or feed into their business models. The same segments will be considered when addressing the market outside the Atlantic area.

Segmentation considers differences in the services (or products) specifications, business model (mainly related with type of organisation: business, institutions or businesses; and relation between user and customer) and the way in which the data or service are integrated in the operations of the customer:

Blue economy (maritime business agents), business companies (user and customer is the same organisation) that develop their activities based on the Ocean and Coastal areas. These can be:
- Logistics & Transportation (shipping);
- Fishing;
- Farming;
- Mining;
- Energy generation; or
- Insurance companies.
Resource managers, usually public entities tasked with managing resources and overseeing activities, including:
- Regulators;
- Port authorities;
- Maritime traffic authorities;
- Air traffic authorities;
- Radio spectrum/ communications authorities; or
- Environmental protection agencies.
Safety and security agencies such as EMSA or national civil protection agencies.
Meteorological Institutes, that require specific sets of data.
Researchers, accessing data through institutional level agreements.
Downstream, including companies that require data and information to provide their services; and also Cloud infrastructure providers.
Satellite operators and integrators that can acquire subsystems (e.g., cameras) or even complete systems (e.g. satellites), to be considered a potential spin-off revenue stream.

Even though these customer segments comprehend a broad range of organisations, their specific needs can in many cases be catered through similar services. The validation of user needs in these customer segments will be performed during SPACE4ATLANTIC’s de-risking phase.

Target customers/user’s countries

International

Product description

SPACE4ATLANTIC will deliver data, information and knowledge services from a small satellite constellation to detect and monitor fast developing events (with significant developments within a few hours), that will complement existing EO systems to allow for more effective and efficient study, protection, management and fostering of blue economy activities in the Atlantic region. Through developing, integration and operation of a constellation of small satellites, SPACE4ATLANTIC will fill observation gaps in revisit, latency and sensor performance over the Atlantic, complement existing EO Systems (e.g. Copernicus), and cater to the needs of blue economy stakeholders, Maritime operators, Resource managers and Regulators, Security and other dedicated public agencies, Researchers, and society at large.

Added Value

The ability to deliver cost-efficient data, information and knowledge services to detect and monitor fast developing events, from a constellation of small satellites aimed at high revisit frequency and low latency mainly targeted at the Atlantic region has value for different costumer segments. Translating into different proposals for different customers, the following added values are envisioned:

Near real-time analysis-ready data and information
Alerts and near real-time knowledge on areas of interest for economic agents.
Alerts, and near real-time knowledge and information from broad area coverage for Ocean-related Resource managers and Regulators.
Customised analysis-ready data for Dedicated public agencies.
Archive data and information for Researchers.
Near real-time Data, information and knowledge for Intermediate players.

Direct Space-based info for Final consumers in the future

Current Status

The Final Review for this activity has been held on January 2023. The activity is now concluded.

EFE Plus

Objectives of the Product

The market evolution of SAR-based Earth Observation systems requires an increase of SAR performance in terms of resolution, together with radiometric parameters quality. Based on the state-of-the-art of present technologies, this objective would be achieved at satellite level by increasing the SAR antenna area with the consequence of increasing the spacecraft mass and size. In order to avoid an increase of costs and complexity due to this inefficient trend of mass and volume (limiting the access to orbit due to launcher envelope constraints and increasing the complexity of in-orbit maneuvers due to the larger SAR antenna size), it is necessary to develop suitable technologies able to enhance the RF transmitted power density and to achieve better SAR performances without increasing, and possibly reducing, the SAR antenna size and mass. The purpose of the provided solution is to increase the RF transmitted power density, in order to enhance the SAR performance without increasing the antenna size and mass; such objective is achieved by using highest efficiency power amplifier and electronics technologies and studying the thermal drainage solutions that are needed to solve the potential thermal constraints due to the increase of the dissipated power density.

Customers and their Needs

Typical Customer needs are summarized in the table below, where the “Pain” associated to the Need and the “Gain” offered by the HE-R1000 product are also reported.

Target customers/users countries

Institutional entities of worldwide emerging countries not yet able to sustain an autonomous national space policy.

Product Description

The EFE Plus is a key element of the active section of the antenna of the HE-R1000 product, an end-to-end Earth Observation System consisting of:

a Space Segment constituted by one radar satellite composed of the platform and the SAR-based instrument;
a Radar Ground Segment composed of the Core Ground Segment and the Image Analytics Segment.

The key features of the HE-R1000 product are:

high revisit time (i.e. multiple data take opportunities per day over the same target), due to its inclined orbit optimized for each specific Customer/area of interest;
agile operation (i.e. high maneuverability for image acquisitions and for repointing to successive images) due to satellite low mass and Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS);
very high resolution granted by the satellite agility and the electronic beam steering of the antenna.

The HE-R1000 product is intended:

to deliver Earth Reconnaissance radar imagery in the X-band spectrum;
to be used for detection, recognition, identification of objects of interest and detection of changes, with the capability to answer the needs from Defense/Security Users and Civil Users;
to be procured/owned/operated by the Customer requiring requires sovereignty over system ownership and in-service operations.

Added Value

Distinctive features of the HE-R1000 product:

images with very high resolution and sensitivity (capability enhanced by the EFE Plus)
low mass and volume to be compatible with low costs for the single satellite launch and to allow multiple launches for deploying a constellation (mass and volume not impacted by the EFE Plus)
through specific mini-Control Momentum Gyro included in the AOCS, the satellite is agile and capable to frequently acquire images of a selected area/from a selected orbit, solving Regional Emergency Management needs
data security: the system is equipped with means for protecting TM and TC and with Data Ciphering/deCiphering HW

Current Status

Kick-Off meeting held on September 9, 2022. Requirements definition phase in progress, Requirement Review scheduled for December 7, 2022.

BODIS

Objectives of the Product

BODIS offers long-term accurate predictions of surface and asset motions, and its associated flood risk for asset portfolios. All buildings and/or engineering structures are subject to land subsidence and flooding, making them vulnerable for these processes. During floods, besides the societal impact, these assets face huge financial risks due to the sagging of these structures and the associated flooding. Therefore, asset owners and financial stakeholders benefit from insights into these risks, especially in the light of future climate change effects.

The service is built upon InSAR data and hydrodynamic simulation software, suitable for simulations of flooding and drought scenarios, keeping climate change in mind. Specifically, BODIS provides insights in the risk of customers’ asset portfolios (such as individual buildings and engineering structures) and the potential economic impacts they face when flooded. The forward prediction algorithms are integrated with hydrodynamic flooding scenarios and made available for the end-user in an easy-to-use visualisation platform, allowing decision-makers or portfolio owners to make better informed decisions.

Customers and their Needs

Organisations that benefit the most from the information service BODIS are mainly large property owners that report yearly on their amount of assets at risk and the value of these properties.

For example, these values are used for taxation, insurance purposes or need to be compliant with climate agreements. Housing corporations let or sell homes to low-income citizens, older or disabled people. In the Netherlands, they administer tens of thousands of assets (buildings) in potential flood risk areas, such as the floodplains. Furthermore, insurance companies need to calculate the risk due to flooding or land-motion to set the correct profit margins for their policies. The last targeted customers are banking entities which own large volumes of real estate assets who want to be informed of flood and land-motion risks and how these risks devalue the price of these assets.

Target customers/users’ countries

BODIS can be developed and deployed globally. Initially, the targeted customers are located in the Netherlands, but the product is scalable (and developed) to be deployed in countries globally.

Product Description

BODIS is an innovative platform, designed to customers’ needs, where users have access to the most actual subsidence and flooding data. Furthermore, prediction algorithms for land-motion and hydrodynamic simulations predict propagation of floods for future scenarios. As such, end-users obtain new information of the altered risks of their asset portfolios, with future climate scenarios incorporated.

InSAR observations are made for both ground- and high-building level and integrated to spatial covering subsidence maps.
A forwarding prediction algorithm estimates future subsidence risks of targeted assets.
Flooding simulations of actual and future situations (where subsidence is included) are performed to assess flood risks per asset.
A user-friendly web platform is designed, where an API-module integrates above results seamlessly.

Added Value

Organisations are adapting to the effects that result from climate change, such as more extreme weather events, rising sea-levels and soil subsidence. Most organisations use their own tools and datasets to set-up their own risk models, which they offer to their clients. However, the added value of BODIS is the integration of future land-motion and the associated flood risks and its translation to value at risk. Additionally, information on asset level is usually not available (only on larger scales).

With BODIS, end-users obtain information on three different levels to characterise the risks to their asset portfolio in a specific region. BODIS is updated with new scenario information instantly and can be tuned to end-users needs.

Current Status

BODIS is a development of a new type of information service that integrates results from existing systems such as SkyGeo Antares processing services, 3Di Water Management from Nelen & Schuurmans and customises these results in the platform HydroNET from HydroLogic. Each product exists in the market and successfully provides different services in several markets, such as water management, spatial planning or the subsidence business.

This project, now completed, started in 2019 with an innovation call (SBIR) by the Dutch National Space Agency (NSO) and resulted in a prototype for a flood-and-subsidence information service. Currently, a forecasting module for subsidence rates, an automatic model-builder for hydrodynamic schematisations, an automated flooding-simulator and post-processing module (AquaEval) to derive risk classifications for individual assets and disciplines is developed in the BODIS project. All this information is showcased in an information platform.

RAINBOW

Objectives of the Product

Current multispectral data are a solid input data source for agricultural services, but they cannot capture the individual spectral absorption bands that characterise the plant biochemical parameters. Those are necessary to go from crop observation to a deep understanding of the causes of what is happening in the fields, and from qualitative description to quantitative assessment, as a baseline for precision farming on a parcel level.

To be able to address the commercial needs – for accessing the huge smart farming market, for instance – a spatial resolution of 20m or better, and bands in the spectral range of 0,4 to 1,7 µm are required. Such operational, hyperspectral remote sensing data serving the requirements of enhanced agricultural Earth observation (EO) products are currently not available. A major challenge is the typical budget (volume, mass and resulting cost) of a traditional hyperspectral instrument (such as EnMAP or CHIME), leading to satellite costs that are not compliant with a reasonable commercial business plan. A filter-on-chip-based hyperspectral instrument optimised for agricultural applications is expected to solve the issue. RAINBOW is based on a cost-efficient design of the compact optical payload onboard a LEO small satellite supported by appropriate data fusion and processing.

Customers and their Needs

Farmers, farm advisors and the agricultural industry are interested in managing fields in a sustainable way, where yield is high, and inputs are low. With RAINBOW smart farming services, the causes of issues in the field, as well as the spread of the issues can be discovered, allowing precise reactions that lead to profit from stabilised yields and savings from using input resources efficiently.

Certification bodies, governmental agencies, NGOs, and carbon traders need to prove carbon sequestration in soils, for carbon certification. RAINBOW carbon maps show carbon content in soils in a continuous area-wide manner and allow a reduction in laboratory analysis as well as an increase in the temporal frequency of sampling and analysis, leading to better results at lower costs.

Farmers, farm advisors, traders, NGOs, and governmental agencies are interested in the yield quality information such as protein content, to fetch the highest prices or predict the availability of wheat yield for human consumption. RAINBOW Yield Quality Services will allow, for the first time, the prediction of not only yield quantity, but also yield quality from space, allowing farmers, NGOs and governmental agencies to better plan for the future.

Target customers/users countries

The key customer segments targeted by the RAINBOW products are farmers, farm advisors and the agricultural industry worldwide, providing detailed and topical information on the status of their crops and how to manage them best. RAINBOW addresses farmers mainly in Europe, which has the highest ratio of farms with smart farming technology on the field already, but also in North America, Africa and Australia. Additionally, we will also develop services geared towards traders, NGOs, governmental agencies and certification bodies.

Product Description

With the spectrometer-on-chip approach, the goal is to map the required spectral bands of the application 1:1 onto a transmission filter integrated directly in front of the detector. This way, the properties of the spectral channels such as spectral lineshape, are directly related to the transmission of the filter. The difference to multispectral instruments is that a larger number of channels can be observed. This is accomplished by the design of a filter, which is implemented as a ‘pixelated’ filter that reproduces a step pattern, allowing for a dedicated transmission over every column of pixels on the detector.

From the RAINBOW spectral data, smart farming products such as irrigation recommendations, yield forecasts or soil organic carbon content measurements will be generated, and a hyperspectral data cube will be produced for further customised analysis.

Added Value

The data products are addressing the sector of agriculture and data-driven farming, which has the following characteristics:

• Is a global market

• Needs to monitor small parcels, at least weekly, in high-resolution imagery

• Has a very strong price competition (small cost/ha)

• Is strongly pushing towards a smaller impact to environment (without fertilizers and pesticides, low carbon footprint, preservation of biodiversity, etc.)

• Follows the traditional behaviour of end users

In order to be successful on the market, the availability of remote-sensing data covering the relevant area at least on bi-weekly basis is mandatory. The filter-on-chip-based instrument concept is an enabling technology that is a pre-requisite for keeping the cost for acquiring the hyperspectral data reasonably low.

Current Status

The InCubed+ de-risking activity was kicked-off in December 2022. In preparation of the activity preliminary market assessment and derivation of mission requirements have been performed. Also preliminary requirements to derive the payload design like spatial resolution, spectral resolution and radiometric performances are established. Initial design parameters for the filter and chip are defined and a candidate detector is selected. Trade-off how to mount the filter on the detector and design optimization for the telescope are required to achieve the goal of a low cost instrument design.

Radio Occultation Service, RoccS.

Objectives of the Product

The primary market is a Commercial RO Service that provides RO data for Meteorology and NWP. This is the most mature RO market, which has recently reached the point where continuous financing can be foreseen to be available for procurement of commercial RO data products.

We base our mission on a trustable solution with strong heritage. Our heritage GRAS-2 instrument has been developed, within MetOp-SG, to meet EUMETSAT requirements for RO in the coming decades. The instrument flies on a satellite with proved reliability.

A high-end space equipment to ensure high availability, dependability, and performance
Long mission durations to maintain cost efficiency of data products

Customers and their Needs

For European meteorology the accuracy increases by more occultations, the current need expressed by WMO is at least 20.000 occultations/day corresponding to 10 to 12 RO satellites with GRAS-2. ECMWF has demonstrated NWP improvements up to 100.000 occultations/day and EUMETSAT has expressed need for additional European commercial RO providers.

RO is extremely valuable for climate monitoring as it is a calibration free measurement without drifts. This means that RO observations also can be used to calibrate other data sources researched. RO observations for Meteorology can also serve climate.

RO for space weather, relate to monitoring and prediction of the ionosphere. In the long run we foresee that space weather will require more RO data than meteorology. The market is not mature yet but is under development.

Target customers/users countries

The Commercial RO Service will be sold to the customer segments where we initially will focus on direct contract with EUMETSAT and NOAA for meteorological use as both EUMETSAT and NOAA currently have budget to procure commercial RO data.

Product Description

The Commercial RO Service consists of a space segment and a ground segment. The main components of the Commercial RO Service are the GRAS-2 instrument hosted on a suitable satellite platform and the ground segment with processing and distribution of RO data products to paying customers.

The role of the Commercial RO Service in the context of the overall system/service of its target users is to provide access to global RO data of high quality with high availability and low latency. This RO data will improve the accuracy of numerical weather forecasts and will also contribute to improved climate monitoring, as well as space weather monitoring.

The external interfaces of the Commercial RO service are:

• The GRAS-2 instrument receives RF signals transmitted by GNSS satellites (Galileo, GPS, Beidou) on two frequency bands centred at 1575.42 MHz (L1) and 1176.45MHz (L5)

• The RO data user (customer) will receive Level 0 data through a User Interface Platform

• The RO data user (customer) will also receive data containing service quality indices through the User Interface Platform

Radio occultation conceptual geometry. The field-of-view of the different antennas are illustrated in green.

Added Value

Current Status

Requirement Review performed including
- Definition of Instrument Adaptations
- Mission Requirements
RFP issued to potential satellite service providers
- Cover letter
- SoW
- Specification
Instrument mission adaptations initiated
Cloud Service Architecture initiated

PROGRES.lu

Objectives of the Product

The understanding of extreme precipitation events is of critical interest for scientists as the frequency of those events is likely to increase and as they have a direct impact on many human activities (e.g., agriculture, logistics, accessibility to water, landslides or flood prevention, natural disasters) with devastating socio-economic consequences. Those events are controlled by moisture, but there is an absence of efficient measurements of such moisture profiles when precipitation occurs. By leveraging the capabilities of the CubeSat platform and growing experience on processing and analyzing GNSS-RO Data, Spire proposes to alleviate the heterogeneity and limitation of existing sensing solutions (infrared, radar, …) with an approach that could deliver valuable precipitation data, globally, with the potential to scale to a large constellation at a cost point that is substantially lower than today’s EO missions. This would potentially lead to a better understanding of events such as tropical cyclones, as well as better validation tools for cloud and precipitation models, improving weather forecasts.

Customers and their Needs

There are 3 customer segments identified:

National and multinational weather agencies / research and civil protection institutions: Needing accurate precipitation information, comparable and compatible with other existing terrestrial and space-based remote sensing systems, available during rapidly evolving precipitation events. There will be varying requirements and needs among them: historical data versus current and forecast; global versus regional; data latency; operational availability, etc.
Application Service Providers: Designing tools to support operations of weather-exposed industries. Some of which are already existing customers of Spire. This customer segment is more interested in an accurate, reliable and affordable source of data, notably during rapidly evolving precipitation events.
End Customers: Having ‘in-housed’ the development of their own applications and related meteorological products and services, looking for quality weather information to support business critical applications (Agribusiness, Insurance, Airline operators, …) facing difficulties accessing data during rapidly evolving events.

Targeted customer/users countries

Interests have been raised in Europe as well as in American and UK based
institutions.

Product description

The main product consists of vertically resolved profiles of GNSS-PRO which are sensitive to the presence of precipitation and ice crystals as well as to temperature and moisture. The data are obtained from an in-orbit demonstrator payload aboard a CubeSat. These data produced by the GNSS-PRO sensor will be generated and formatted as per Earth observation standards.

The main components of the product will be profiles of calibrated polarimetric phase delay differences and derived features consistent with the vertical structures of precipitation, as well as the conventional output of GNSS radio occultations; combined together, they enable further capacities of detection such as the cloud top height or to potentially distinguish convective from stratiform precipitation. This would lead to a new data product to be fully embedded into Spire’s full range of weather data products.

Modules	Functions/Features	Description/Design	Development Status	Critical Technologies
LEMUR Satellite Bus	Provides hosting of the PRO sensor in space	Use of Spire standard LEMUR bus	Fully developed and operational across the Spire fleet. No extensive adaptations required.	None
STRATOS Receiver	Processes GNSS RF PRO signals	GNSS receiver for several systems: GPS, Galileo, Glonass and QZSS	Modification. The STRATOS RO system is fully developed and has flight heritage. An adaptation of the receiver software has been performed to correctly combine two polarimetric ports.	RF multiband Multiservice Compressor
PRO Antenna	Collects GNSS RF PRO signals, separated in H/V polarizations	An antenna consisting of an H/V polarimetric phased array of three microstrip square patches. Sensitive to horizontal and vertical polarizations (defined as azimuth and elevation directions from the antenna point of view, respectively)	New. Designed, manufactured, tested, launched, and commissioned.	Microstrip technology of phased arrays
PRO DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM	Ingests raw PRO data and produces a) Standard calibrated RO atmospheric profiles; and b) vertical profiles of polarimetric differential phase that exhibit a robust relationship with path-integrated precipitation and/or frozen hydrometeors.	Code responsible for calculating the polarimetric differential phase, for its calibration and interpretation in a vertical profile of heights. Quality check and outlier identification to reject invalid profiles.	New/Modification. Partially reused code from RO standard excess phase processing and partially new code to process the polarimetric differential phase part	RO inversion of refractivity. Calibration of the PRO antenna H and V phase patterns and cross-polarization effects.

*PRO FM undergoing testing in the Spire anechoic chamber.*

*Deployment of Spire FM170 on SpaceX’s Transporter-7 launch*

*Aggregated differential phase shift profiles from Spire (differentiated by GNSS) showing the clear systematic signal of precipitation on the mean phase shift values at low altitudes.*

*Comparison of differential phase shift between Spire collections and ground-based radars showing good agreement. Credit: IEEC*

Added Value

Spire sees GNSS-PRO as an incipient and innovative approach to the observation and measurement of rainfall under all weather and day/night conditions, and in accordance with an overarching vision to utilize GNSS signals of opportunity to generate valuable weather products with an already proven ability to deliver in this domain. The first and only space mission to carry a GNSS-PRO payload is the Radio Occultation and Heavy Precipitation (ROHP) experiment aboard PAZ, a Spanish Earth observation and reconnaissance satellite launched on 22 February 2018. Spire will innovate beyond ROHP in the following key aspects:

The instrument: With a new antenna and a new multiband receiver technology
The integration of the instrument within a small sat platform
The evaluation of the potential of this new data source for assimilation models

Current Status

The activity concluded successfully following the final review on 17-October-2023.

Following the successful design and manufacturing of the PRO payload, Spire has extended its trial to include two additional satellites, FM167 and FM170, alongside FM166.

These satellites were successfully launched and commissioned on 3-January-2023 and 3-February-2023, respectively. Since then, operational data flow has commenced, with approximately 2000 PRO profiles collected daily from all three FMs, achieving a latency of only a few hours.

Noteworthy findings from the validation campaign include the demonstration of comparable quality between RO retrievals based on dual-polarizations measurements and those from RHCP measurements, making them suitable for assimilation into Numerical Weather Prediction models.

Additionally, differential phase profiles (H-V) have shown consistent positive shifts of 2-3 mm during rain events compared to no-rain events.
Moreover, on-orbit calibration of antenna patterns has yielded results consistent with ground-based calibrations, with minimal phase shift patterns (<0.5 mm), eliminating the need for further antenna calibration for the current validation scope.

The correlation between mean phase shift values (indicative of hydrometeors presence) and rain events, as determined by the IMERG product, has been established, with a notable hit rate of 74% for rain events and 90% for no-rain events based on 10,000 profiles.

Validation results have been corroborated by external collaborators from CSIC/IEEC, including comparisons against additional sensors such as ground-based radars and case studies over hurricanes, further enhancing the credibility and applicability of the findings.

Skymetry

Objectives of the Product

Skymetry’s cutting-edge monitoring services are designed to revolutionise how assets are managed across various industries. Leveraging advanced remote-sensing technologies, Skymetry offers accurate, scalable, and cost-effective solutions. Skymetry’s mission is focused on fusing together advanced remote-sensing technologies and AI annotations to assess and monitor large assets in the Energy, Infrastructure and Urban domains.

While supporting owners in safeguarding asset integrity and managing site control and planning, Skymetry also plays a key role in evaluating the environmental sustainability of these resources, determining the potential impacts these assets can generate on the surrounding territory.

Skymetry redefines asset maintenance and sustainability assessment by delivering 4D-geospatial SaaS Solutions that match high-resolution maps, deep historisation, high geospatial accuracy and informed decision-making tools while embracing a broadened view of the asset.
Skymetry is specifically designed to promote seamless data acquisition integration from multiple Earth Observation (EO) sources, either airborne (UAVs, aircrafts) and spaceborne (satellites). Furthermore, it streamlines the processing and publishing of AI-assisted virtual investigation tools.

Benefits:

Asset Monitoring Effectiveness: Skymetry Monitoring Services provide comprehensive coverage and timely detection of critical asset evolutions, enhancing asset management and risk mitigation.
Cost Efficiency: by optimising data usage and leveraging AI-driven analytics, Skymetry ensures efficient resource allocation in the data-gathering phases, resulting in cost savings for our clients.
Seamless Integration: Skymetry Monitoring Services are designed to seamlessly integrate and complement the clients’ existing GIS legacy systems, enhancing operational workflows and data accessibility.
Enhanced Decision-Making: Skymetry AI Services provide accurate insights, enabling informed decisions to be taken with confidence.
Operational Efficiency: Skymetry AI-driven solutions streamline workflows and optimise resource allocation.
Real-Time Insights: Skymetry timely issues qualified insights about changing conditions and emerging trends, for proactive decision-making.

Customers and their Needs

Skymetry’s solutions are tailored to meet the specific needs of each served industry vertically.

Skymetry Services have been tailored according to vertical user-needs expressed by operators within the Energy, Infrastructure, Environmental Protection and Urban Planning domains.

Thanks to the experience acquired by DigiSky over the past 10 years, Skymetry’s uniqueness lies within the native integration and combination of all possible EO sources into a single end-to-end SaaS platform that competitively delivers insightful 4D AI-enabled reports, which can be directly integrated into the operational workflows of infrastructure owners and governmental agencies.

In the Energy sector, Skymetry Services optimise infrastructure monitoring in the power generation and transportation, contributing to their sustainability and efficiency.

In the Infrastructure domain, Skymetry Services provide in-depth inspections to ensure resilience and safety. In pre-construction phases, Skymetry provides accurate Digital Twins which are at the foundation of the digital design and simulation.

Thanks to Skymetry Environment solutions, ecological changes can be monitored to safeguard natural resources and assess hydrogeological risks.

In Urban Planning, Skymetry empowers the envisioning of how the “as-built” context can be evolved while extracting BIM-ready models. Skymetry Services ensure that clients gain actionable insights to improve operations and achieve sustainable outcomes.

Targeted customer/users’ countries

The Skymetry SaaS product is designed to serve four primary customer segments:

Infrastructure operators (transportation, gas, water)
Energy providers and utilities.
Urban planners and municipalities.
Environmental agencies and organisations.

Clients in these sectors can benefit from Skymetry’s user-friendly web-GIS interface to place georeferenced orders to monitor their assets.

By integrating EO data, Skymetry ensures continuous monitoring of areas of interest, while acting as “magnifying lens”, whenever required.

Through advanced change-detection AI algorithms, the aerial inspections are triggered, using certified general aviation aircrafts equipped with high-resolution sensors (RGB, SAR, TIR, LiDAR, Hyper-Spectral). This combination of EO sources and observation bands enables superior monitoring insights, while optimising operations time and costs through selective and automated data-gathering strategies. Besides relying on existing EO sources, Skymetry competitively supports innovative spaceborne payloads vendors and upstream nano-satellite OEMs with atmospheric testing, de-risking and calibration services (SkyGate), thus contributing to the development of the EO upstream segment in New Space Economy.

Product description

Skymetry provides advanced monitoring services that combine satellite, aerial, and AI-driven technologies to offer precise, real-time insights for industries operating in the energy, infrastructure, environment, and urban planning fields.

Skymetry Services enable the transition from traditional ground-based monitoring methods to remote-sensing practices, by providing an integrated virtual inspection environment co-piloted by AI.

Skymetry is an integrated end-to-end SaaS solution for monitoring operations that automatically tasks the most suitable EO sources relevant to the target asset and release AI-based reports that co-pilot very-high-definition virtual inspection operations within an integrated web-GIS environment.

Added Value

Skymetry acts as an end-to-end solution with various advantages:

Easy Asset Selection: by entering Skymetry native SaaS WebGIS, clients can easily select their preferred target areas or assets and activate a tailored monitoring process.
Fully Automated Monitoring Process: for all activated targets, Skymetry automates all monitoring steps, including the multi-source data gathering and the editing of reports, ensuring relevance and efficiency throughout the entire monitoring process.
AI-Enhanced Insights: Skymetry leverages precise AI models to generate geo-referenced status reports for all monitored targets, securely delivering them to clients through an intuitive 3D visualisation SaaS platform.

Current Status

This activity is completed.

DigiSky has been capable of obtaining noticeable achievements over the years in its core markets and in various regions.

Having designed and certified a proprietary avionic solution (SmartBay®) which enables any general aviation aircraft to be easily transformed into a special mission airborne data-gathering tool, DigiSky has enabled the possibility of rapid geographical scalability of aerial operations through affiliated partners, to complement available EO sources.

Skymetry Services are currently addressing commercial and pilot programs in the following domains and regions:

Solar-Power generation (3 projects, EU)
Motorway/Rail Infrastructures (9 projects, EU)
District Heating (5 cities, EU)
Gas Distribution (2 projects, EU)
Water Distribution (4 projects, EU)
Pre-construction BIM digitalization (2 projects, EU)
Urban Planning (4 projects, EU+MENA)
Hydro-Power generation (2 projects, EU)
Hydrogeological risk (6 projects, EU)
Environment Impact (1 project, EU)
Forestry (4 projects, EU)
Glaciers (4 projects, EU)

In Solar Power generation, Skymetry is steadily serving over 4GW of installed capacity across Europe.

HiVE

Objectives of the Product

constellr, a European leader in thermal intelligence and satellite technology, provides unparalleled insights into Earth’s resources and land use through proprietary space-based infrared detection. Using high-precision Land Surface Temperature (LST) data, the key objective of constellr’s product is to empower stakeholders with real-time thermal insights to proactively address challenges in agriculture, urban planning, and infrastructure management.

Temperature is a critical variable for understanding stresses and anomalies in ecosystems, urban zones, and infrastructure. By providing early detection of issues such as crop stress, urban heat patterns, and infrastructure vulnerabilities, constellr’s thermal intelligence enables precise interventions to mitigate risks and optimise outcomes. These actionable insights support yield predictions, policy development, and supply chain optimisation, ensuring smarter, data-driven decision-making.

To achieve this, constellr employs hyper-scalable cloud infrastructure and a global network of ground stations. This advanced delivery system minimises latency between satellite measurements and actionable data, providing users with near-real-time access to critical information.

By harnessing thermal intelligence, constellr aims to revolutionise how industries manage resources, ensuring sustainability, resilience, and efficiency across the globe.

Customers and their Needs

constellr serves customers across agriculture, urban planning, infrastructure management, and sustainability, addressing critical challenges with precise thermal intelligence data.

In agriculture, agribusinesses use constellr’s real-time thermal intelligence atlas to monitor crop health, soil moisture, and early signs of stress. By enabling targeted irrigation and proactive measures, constellr helps optimise water use, reduce waste, and improve yields—key to sustainably feeding a global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050.

Urban planners rely on constellr’s data to identify urban heat islands and develop cooling strategies, such as adding vegetation or improving materials, to create more sustainable and climate-resilient cities. The data also informs infrastructure designs that adapt to local microclimates, reducing reliance on energy-intensive cooling systems.

For the infrastructure industry, constellr’s thermal monitoring identifies vulnerabilities in transport networks during extreme weather, enabling preventative maintenance and reducing costly emergency repairs.

In sustainability, policymakers and conservation agencies depend on constellr’s insights to monitor carbon sinks, track offset projects, and regulate emissions. This data ensures accountability in climate action and supports global efforts to meet carbon reduction goals.

constellr empowers stakeholders across sectors with actionable insights to address resource challenges, build resilience, and drive sustainable practices.

Targeted customer/users countries

Pan-Europe: smart farming stakeholders for whom data and farm management information systems are the norm (Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Turkey, etc.). Beyond Europe, the key global agricultural production areas include, but are not limited to, the USA, South America, the Middle East (Israel), Asia (Turkey) and eventually Sub-Saharan Africa.

Product description

constellr’s real-time global thermal intelligence atlas revolutionises sustainable management by leveraging high-precision Land Surface Temperature (LST) data. Acting as a “digital twin” of Earth, it delivers actionable insights into vegetation, urban zones, and infrastructure, enabling better prediction and management of natural and human systems through accessible, biophysical data-driven solutions.

constellr’s customers can subscribe to data for their AOI, with cost being a function of area size, revisit frequency, and timeliness (latency). Recorded data in the thermal infrared and VNIR spectral regions are downlinked, processed to Level-2 Land-Surface Temperature, and then delivered via API to the ordering customer.

constellr’s TIR payload uses proprietary design elements in cryocooling sensors, high-performance thermal systems and optics to miniaturise traditional TIR sensor payloads to the size of more agile microsatellites. Novel operational concepts such as “virtual calibration” (VCAL), reduce space segment costs massively. Our data distribution platform further leverages the cost benefits of hyperscalable cloud technology to distribute our critical data to a global customer base.

Added Value

Accessing high-quality geospatial data is often challenging due to high costs, complexity requiring specialised expertise, inconsistent availability that limits trend mapping, and low resolution, which restricts precision applications like targeted irrigation.

A new approach to thermal measurement addresses these barriers through space-borne sensors that deliver high-precision temperature data. Unlike traditional methods such as drones or planes, this technology provides continuously updated data, enabling near real-time trend mapping and rapid responses to temperature changes. This makes it particularly valuable for climate adaptation, water resource management, and sustainable agriculture.

The system is also cost-effective compared to traditional terrestrial monitoring methods. By combining orbital data with ground-based sources and presenting it in an accessible format, the solution reduces both financial and technical barriers, making advanced geospatial insights more widely available.

This approach offers a practical and scalable way to monitor and manage environmental and infrastructure systems, providing the actionable insights needed to address global challenges and improve resource efficiency.

Current Status

The de-risking activity kicked-off in April 2022. The proto-flight model (PFM1) manufacturing is completed and has completed its final environmental and functional tests. Launch is planned for the first quarter of 2025 via the Falcon 9 Transporter 12 mission.

UKKO

Objectives of the Product

Although all satellites have flight software, most of them are strongly architected around hardware, adding software at the last stages of development, as if it were an afterthought. This makes the solution rigid, incapable of change and less “smart”. On the contrary, software-defined products, as the name implies, have software as the architecture foundation, thus providing a step change in terms of efficiency and flexibility.

ReOrbit is building “Muon”, which is a bundle including flight software together with avionics hardware, to act as the backbone of the spacecraft. Similarly to what an operating system does for computers or smartphones, ReOrbit Muon enables customers to focus on the (Earth Observation – EO) application, without having to look into the underlying layer that is the connection between application and satellite. The Muon bundle can be installed aboard any satellite, enabling a breadth of capabilities and therefore augmenting EO missions and beyond.

Muon is the heart of ReOrbit’s “Gluon”, which is a small satellite platform optimized for connectivity and autonomy. By combining the reliability-first approach of “traditional space” with the time-to-market, cost-effectiveness, and innovation of NewSpace, ReOrbit can offer an attractive and powerful satellite platform to its customers. What is more, ReOrbit Muon includes a full digital twin: a digital replica of the Gluon platform, which allows customers to de-risk their capital expenditures at a very early stage of the mission, as well as train their operators and plan flight procedures.

Customers and their Needs

ReOrbit’s main customers are satellite operators and satellite manufacturers serving communications and EO segments, although ReOrbit’s mission-agnostic approach can be applied easily to most customer needs. ReOrbit is especially attractive to EO payloads that require fast and affordable access to orbit, and those with satellites approaching end-of-life within the next 2-3 years.

Indirectly, applications using satellites developed and operated by downstream customers benefit from more efficient data handling enabled by the ReOrbit satellite platform, which minimizes the cost of data over time. Data companies dependent on space-produced data but with limited spacecraft expertise benefit from ReOrbit’s offering.

Customers can either purchase ReOrbit’s flight software and avionics to be installed on top of their satellite platform as a bundle, or they can purchase the complete satellite platform with all required subsystems in place. In the Ukko activity, customers are involved in the product management feedback loop, so that development matches their needs and thus the overall needs of the market with regards to flight software as well as mission and satellite simulation.

Targeted customer/users countries

ReOrbit’s market is global, and global are our current customers as well.

Product description

ReOrbit Muon is a satellite flight software stack and avionics bundle, which can be seen as a set of services for the satellite. Similarly to what an operating system does for computers or smartphones, ReOrbit Muon enables customers to focus on the EO application, without having to look into the underlying layer that is the connection between application and satellite. The different features of ReOrbit Muon, developed as separate libraries and modules, consolidate into an Application Protocol Interface (API) which interacts with the different EO payloads.

Based around Muon, ReOrbit Gluon is a complete satellite platform with all the subsystems in place to carry and operate a payload in orbit.

Muon & Gluon enable connecting several EO spacecraft together in coordinated constellations, capable of autonomous and synchronized work, coupled with seamless data flow inside and between the satellites, as well as to ground segment.

Customers can either purchase Muon to be incorporated on their own satellite platform, or they can purchase Gluon as a full-fledged satellite platform. In addition, customers get the digital twin of the purchased hardware to a simulator provided by ReOrbit, which allows the customer to de-risk their mission, train their operators, test updates on the flight software configurations and plan procedures related to their mission.

The software and avionics stack is designed to ensure at least 2.5Gbps data flow across its architecture, and to autonomously perform corrective measures to guarantee a 95% uptime or system availability. The product architecture of ReOrbit Muon, showcasing also the connectivity between different Muon-powered satellites, can be seen in the following image:

The Payload Data Flow Management module (PDFM) ensures that EO data is stored and transferred efficiently and error-free from multiple sources to multiple sinks within the architecture.

The Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) is designed to be actuator- and sensor –agnostic, and allows operators to have a common set of control laws across their constellations, with the possibility of managing a diverse ecosystem of ADCS equipment and tailoring their needs according to mission requirements.

Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) ensures that off-nominal conditions will not spread and escalate into mission-critical failures. The FDIR module contains self-diagnostics capabilities to flag long-time off nominal trends and perform automated corrective actions to increase uptime.

The Autonomous Flight Control and Station Keeping module ensures spacecraft maintain orbital geometry with minimum use of humans in the loop. The API implements a request-response protocol all customers flying ReOrbit Muon can interact with from their own on-board computers to access to Ukko services. The API runs fully inside the Muon bundle.

Added Value

The core value for customers comes from enabling a satellite that is flexible and configurable, reducing time-to-orbit, cost-to-orbit and operational costs. ReOrbit is able to achieve this by:

Integrating standardized and flight-proven satellite subsystems to reduce non-recurring engineering and lead time of the full satellite by means of adopting standard, modular form-factors and data interfaces
Incorporating 3^rd party applications on top of the flight software with no increased operational risk
Offering fully automated operations and high fault tolerance, for increased satellite lifetime and less time required by mission managers for constellation monitoring and error handling
Offering in-orbit connectivity that enables higher data throughput and more efficient flow of data by interoperating and networking with other satellites

In addition, we increase the overall revenue for our customers by ensuring high satellite availability (optimizing uptime), autonomous fault recovery, full on-orbit reflashability, and having a reliable architecture which includes rapid switchovers and continuous data scrubbing.

Current Status

Ukko is a development and demonstration project that aims to develop specific features and capabilities of the ReOrbit software which are instrumental to high performance EO platforms. The different features, developed as separate libraries, are accessed through the API, which interacts with the various EO payloads.

Ukko activities consist of the detailed design definition, development, and verification of the system (simulation and library components), as well as the detailed definition of internal and external interfaces, the integration and verification of the entire API with EO test cases. On the commercial side – market analysis, partner engagement, and business case development activities to mature the product commercially. Ukko results showcase the maturity and quality of ReOrbit’s product Muon.