From day three of World Space Business Week in Paris, Torsten Kriening sits down with Pieter Fossel, co-founder and CEO of Hydrosat, following his appearance at the Space Innovation Summit.
Fossel offers a compelling framing of thermal intelligence: the Earth, and every object on it, whether natural or man-made, is constantly speaking to us – and much of what it says comes through heat. A crop field under stress, a forest dry enough to be susceptible to fire, an industrial facility ramping up production or coming offline: each reveals itself through its temperature signature. What makes thermal so valuable, he explains, is that it speaks day and night, unlike many of the Earth observation capabilities the industry has been built around.
The headline news is Hydrosat’s newly announced Osiris constellation. Building on two satellites already on orbit since the company’s first launch in 2024, Osiris represents a substantial leap in capability. It will deliver data at 25 metres per pixel in the long-wave infrared, a marked improvement on the roughly 100-metre native thermal resolution of the best legacy systems, while simultaneously widening the swath to 340 km across track. That combination, paired with tasking, allows enormous areas – such as the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca – to be monitored at higher resolution and with revisit rates ranging from roughly daily to every few days depending on latitude. The first two Osiris satellites are due to launch next year.
On dual use, Fossel is direct. Hydrosat has worked with defence customers since 2019, accounting for around 40% of its business, and the company has always been dual-use. The value proposition is stark: activity long concealed under the cover of darkness – repositioning troops or equipment, operating facilities under sanction – becomes visible through thermal signatures. Thermal intelligence, as he puts it, removes the cover of darkness. The company was also recently awarded a place on NOAA’s space-based environmental monitoring contract vehicle, easing access to its data at scale for US federal customers.
Asked about Europe and sovereignty, where Hydrosat maintains a presence in Luxembourg, Fossel describes a dual approach: supplying data as a product to companies and friendly governments, while also supporting the global move toward sovereign capabilities. The payload design and manufacturing capability developed in-house for Osiris can equally be built for other operators’ sovereign satellite programmes – potentially at different resolutions or in other bands – with the company actively exploring partnerships and local capacity investment to meet those requirements.
