From day two at Mission-K in Kalkar, Torsten Kriening welcomes back Daniel Seidel, CEO and co-founder of LiveEO, who is presenting within the event’s Berlin dome.
Seidel, attending for the second year, describes the appeal of the format: a decommissioned nuclear facility, fifteen domes designed to evoke a Mars landscape – complete with smoke, fog and considerable heat – and plenty of time to network with companies and stakeholders from across the ecosystem. Groups rotate through each dome in 30-minute sessions, allowing genuine conversation. The fact that Berlin has secured its own dome dedicated to space and defence technology is, he notes, a significant signal in itself, with multiple startups showcasing alongside LiveEO’s camera model.
The headline news came that morning: LiveEO has been awarded a contract under INSPECTEO – INtelligent Security for Public Entities and Critical Threats from Earth Observation,, a call issued by the Space Innovation Hub, an initiative hosted by the German Aerospace Center DLR in coordination with the German armed forces and focused on dual-use applications spanning civil, military and security domains. Working together with the University of the German Armed Forces, LiveEO will fuse its 3D modelling derived from electro-optical data with the university’s synthetic aperture radar capabilities. Seidel highlights the broader significance: the perennial complaint that procurement and funding for the armed forces take too long is precisely what the Space Innovation Hub was created to address – and this award shows it working in practice.
A second milestone concerns the company’s own space segment. Berlin’s Senator of Finance recently visited LiveEO’s offices and signed a guarantee from the State of Berlin and the German government supporting the company’s satellite financing, enabling a loan for manufacturing. For a scale-up, Seidel says, such backing is substantial, and reflects a level of regional commitment previously associated mainly with Bavaria. The TwinSpector mission is now in production, with the company’s AI already working across a wide range of third-party sensor data and set to incorporate its own satellites in due course.
Seidel closes with a reflection drawn from a decade in the sector: the degree of collaboration now visible across the German and European ecosystem over the past year or two is, in his experience, genuinely unprecedented – and precisely what is needed. LiveEO, he adds, continues to hire across dozens of open positions.
