The proliferation of small satellites and affordable launch prices have made space more accessible than ever before, opening the door to bespoke applications such as global pollution monitoring, crop monitoring and new ways of collecting weather and climate data.
Now you can add wildfire detection to that list: Satellites have been watching wildfires from space for decades, but a new effort funded in part by Google’s philanthropic arm aims to deploy more than 50 small satellites in low-earth orbit to pinpoint fires as small as classrooms around the world.
The FireSat constellation, managed by the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance (EFA), will be the first of its kind dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. Google announced Monday that it will invest $13 million in the constellation, building on an earlier investment the company made to help develop custom infrared sensors for the FireSat satellites.
According to the EFA, Google’s funding will help maintain the launch schedule for the first FireSat pilot satellite next year, with the first set of satellites to form an operational constellation potentially launching in 2026.
“Today’s announcement marks an important milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire.” The Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement:“As fires become more intense and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration will be key to driving much-needed innovation in fire management and climate action.”
New Use Cases
The FireSat satellites will be built by California-based satellite manufacturing startup Muon Space, whose microsatellites will each be equipped with a six-band multispectral infrared instrument to monitor a swath of Earth roughly 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide to pinpoint wildfire hotspots.
The satellites are sensitive enough to spot wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network uses Google AI to quickly compare observations of areas of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire. According to GoogleThe AI also considers factors such as nearby infrastructure and local weather in assessing each fire.
Google said it validated its detection models against small fires and established a baseline dataset for its AI by flying sensors into controlled fires. The FireSat partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program.
After detecting a wildfire, it’s crucial that FireSat quickly communicates the location and scale of the blaze to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice a day. “With a full complement of more than 50 satellites, revisit times for most parts of the Earth will be reduced to 20 minutes, with areas most prone to wildfires benefiting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes,” Muon Space said in a statement.
Muon Space
NASA uses satellite observations from the agency’s Earth-observing missions to operate fire detection systems, but none have the sensitivity, resolution and response time of FireSat. Planet’s fleet of more than 200 commercial Earth-imaging satellites provides up-to-date images of nearly all of Earth’s land surface every day. These satellites can also detect wildfires, but the imaging equipment on Planet’s spacecraft has a smaller field of view than FireSat was designed for.
The FireSat constellation’s roster of nonprofit and philanthropic backers is similar to the group of foundations that funded MethaneSAT, which, as its name suggests, monitors methane emissions from space, and the project was funded primarily through private donations. Google is also a partner in MethaneSAT, integrating AI techniques into data analysis and making the data accessible in Google Earth.
All of this is made possible by the low barrier of entry into spaceflight for small businesses, research institutions, and charities. There is more private investment in satellite manufacturers than any other part of the space market, including launch. The proliferation of satellite manufacturers has made buying spacecraft and constellations more affordable.
It’s also cheaper to put satellites into orbit: SpaceX charges $1 million to launch a roughly 366-pound (166-kilogram) payload on a Falcon 9 rocket in a ride-share mission, significantly less than any other launch company. MethaneSat launched on a ride-share mission earlier this year, and while officials haven’t announced a launch provider for FireSat, SpaceX isn’t going to lose out.
