Constellr, a German startup, released initial images on March 17 from Skybee-1, its first thermal-imaging satellite. Using Skybee-1 data, they produced a detailed map showcasing Tokyo's heat distribution across buildings, parks, and waterways. “Temperature is the key environmental variable for determining human activity,” Constellr CEO Max Gulde told SpaceNews. “Looking at Tokyo, you can immediately identify how the rivers are cooling when they’re moving out of the city. You can identify industrial activity. You can see the health of infrastructure, which is tremendously important when it comes to predictive maintenance and city planning.”
Skybee-1, the inaugural satellite in Constellr’s High-precision Versatile Ecosphere (HiVE) constellation, launched January 14 via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission. A second Skybee satellite is slated for launch this summer. Boasting a resolution of 30 square meters per pixel, Skybee-1 heralds “a new era for thermal intelligence,” according to Gulde. “I am of the conviction that thermal intelligence will play a very big role in driving business decisions.”
For years, governments held a monopoly on thermal-imaging satellites. However, recently, numerous startups have secured funding, developed technologies, and started launching satellites to provide thermal data to various clients, including farmers, firefighters, government agencies, and commercial entities. In 2023, the European Commission and European Space Agency awarded Constellr a contract for thermal-infrared imagery. The German Space Agency DLR also granted Constellr a multiyear contract in September.
“Capturing land surface temperature at this level of detail will be invaluable for monitoring urban heat, water stress, and climate resilience,” Peggy Fischer, mission manager of ESA Third Party Missions and Copernicus Contributing Missions, stated. “This achievement demonstrates the potential of high-resolution thermal data to support a wide range of environmental and climate applications.”
Constellr will use Skybee-1 to capture thermal imagery of equatorial regions every four days. The upcoming second Skybee satellite will double this revisit rate. Beyond its own satellite data, Constellr is developing a digital twin of Earth. “We can take low-resolution public data, calibrate it against our data and super sample it, so we have a continuous, high-resolution representation of this AI-driven model,” Gulde explained. “This massively reduces the cost per produced data point, because we can interpolate between data points.”