Chosen by the European Space Agency, Kuva Space will demonstrate its proprietary technological capabilities to monitor farming and aquaculture crops, forests, methane release, and harmful algae blooms in seas and coastal areas. Kuva Space’s hyperspectral data services will facilitate the development of new and accurate commercial services for Copernicus users and beyond, helping them make financially smarter and environmentally responsible decisions related to global issues like food security, carbon capture, and safety and security.
According to Jarkko Antila, CEO of Kuva Space, the program objective is to validate that the robustness and quality of the company’s hyperspectral data meet Copernicus requirements and demonstrate seamless data delivery to support three Copernicus services: The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), and the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS).
Kuva Space’s commercial microsatellite constellation, equipped with a patented hyperspectral camera, can capture scientific-grade data on details like crop types and their health, soil conditions, biomass, biodiversity, and marine chemical pollutants, at scale. Leveraging its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven analytics platform, Kuva Space transforms the collected data into actionable insights, empowering users to monitor, identify, and forecast changes and their impact in near real time.
The availability and usage of hyperspectral data has previously been limited or non-existent in Earth observation. With near real-time hyperspectral data, industries such as agriculture, insurance and finance, carbon and environment, and safety and security get access to reliable, verifiable, and robust insights when making decisions.
Kuva Space will launch its Hyperfield-1 microsatellite in November 2023 before launching four Gen 2 microsatellites in 2024. This will mark the initial stage of Kuva Space’s planned constellation, which aims to eventually deploy up to 100 satellites by 2030 to measure the material composition of any target on Earth sub daily, heightening society’s ability to meet climate, safety, and security challenges.
During the five-year contract period, the Kuva Space team will develop the company’s data acquisition and processing capabilities through various industry use cases, and the distinguished panel of ESA experts will eventually validate its data quality and processing capabilities as part of the program.
“This verification will pave the way for Kuva Space to deliver the highest standards of commercial hyperspectral services for the global market. In the future, Copernicus may decide to augment their data with hyperspectral data from the Kuva Space constellation,” says Antila. “Having Copernicus as our future customer would be a great testament to the quality of our work in the spaceborne hyperspectral domain.”
Overcoming obstacles
In the nascent hyperspectral market, a few Earth observation companies are paving the way for groundbreaking advancements. To succeed, one must solve three critical challenges:
1. Speed and quality: Delivering high-quality, reliable information at an accelerated pace (daily/weekly)
2. Affordability: Making these services accessible to customers from diverse sectors
3. User-friendliness: Ensuring ease of use for seamless adoption.
“Producing only analytics-ready data will limit the reach of the technology and the impact it can have on Earth,” says Antila. “Giving (non-space) customers access to continuous, affordable, near real-time insights (note: not data that needs to be further analyzed) ultimately improves the efficiency and efficacy of decision-making, which is critical in food security, safety, environment, and security applications.”
As an Earth observation company with a bold ambition to build the world’s most extensive hyperspectral constellation and automated AI-powered services, Kuva understandably needs investors. Without this fleet of satellites, the development of near real-time industry services is at risk.
“We also see that creating awareness and educating potential customers about the benefits and applications of hyperspectral technology can take longer than anticipated, especially in more conservative industries,” says Antila. “Many industries are unfamiliar with the technology and its potential, and finding early adopters ready to embrace the novel services can be smaller in volume initially.”
