Earth observation

The member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) want to “accelerate the use of space in Europe to tackle the urgent and unprecedented societal, economic and security challenges faced by Europe and its citizens,” ESA said after a meeting of the countries´ ministers in charge of space in Matosinhos, Portugal.

ICEYE announced having signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on developing advanced SAR products. The collaboration builds on G42’s recent agreement with Yahsat to develop a geospatial data fusion of different sensor modalities. Finnish Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite and analytics provider, ICEYE

In this Space Café Radio – on tour, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke in this episode with Thomas Gruebler, Co-Founder and CEO of OroraTech direct after Thomas and his team received The Spark award in Berlin. In this interview, they spoke about the award, the mission of OroraTech

Mayday.ai and ConstellR, developing agricultural, risk and disaster management monitoring technologies, have entered a partnership. Mayday users will thus benefit from a higher spatial and temporal resolution to reduce climate change disaster risks.  Mayday.ai provides real time risk and disaster intelligence.

OroraTech, the first NewSpace start-up to provide global wildfire detection and monitoring services, is the 2021 winner of The Spark - German Digital Award presented by Handelsblatt and McKinsey.  This award is a high recognition of OroraTech’s mission on protecting our forests and keeping our Earth sustainable by detecting global wildfires and reducing CO2 emissions.

ESA announced the development of the World Settlement Footprint in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Google Earth Engine team, aimed to improve the understanding of trends in global urbanisation. This will be the world’s most comprehensive dataset on human settlement, ESA said.

HawkEye 360 receives additional funding of $145 million from Insight Partners and Seraphim Space, the space data company said. The series D round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners and Seraphim Space Investment Trust, the world’s first listed space tech fund, HawkEye said.

The Earth imaging company Planet acquires the Haarlem/ Netherlands based ag data specialist VanderSat, Planet said. Planet acquires VanderSat, a leading provider of advanced earth data and analytics, for approximately $28 million, in a mix between $18 million in Planet Labs PBC shares and $10 million in cash, the company said. 

Yahsat Government Solutions and G42 Space Program want to work together to deliver AI-enabled remote sensing services to customers, G42 announced. Under the agreement, satellite company Yahsat will make use of G42’s artificial intelligence, cloud computing and analytics capabilities.

During this week’s SpaceCafé, SpaceWatch.Global Publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Lausanne-based Co-Founder and General Manager of Space4Impact, Dr Gaetan Petit. A new-starter in the space game and with an education in neuroscience, Gaetan completed his undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of Lausanne and Harvard, and a doctorate at ETH Zurich,