ICEYE

ICEYE

ICEYE



ICEYE

ICEYE

A Finnish company named ICEYE that is building a constellation of satellites to create synthetic images of the Earth's surface says it has taken the first sub-1 meter resolution photos of the planet with a small satellite. The images show significant detail of crude oil being loaded onto and off of tankers.

According to ICEYE co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Pekka Laurila, since its founding in 2015 ICEYE has raised about $65 million, expanded to 120 employees, and most recently has launched three of its mini-refrigerator-sized satellites into low-Earth orbit.

For the first three years ICEYE focused on technology development, and its first payload launch occurred in January 2018 on board India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Since then ICEYE has launched two more satellites and plans to add another two by the end of this year. "It is fair to say that we are moving into commercial operations, and the scope of those commercial services are rapidly increasing," Laurila said in an interview with Ars.

In contrast to the optical instruments used by most of the existing Earth-focused imaging satellites, ICEYE uses synthetic-aperture radar technology. Its 100kg satellites use the motion of a radar antenna, combined with the time the device travels over a target, to create multi-dimensional images of the surface even through clouds, during day or night. The "synthetic" part of the antenna is due to the fact that a small antenna moving over a large distance can effectively mimic the resolution of a much larger antenna.

Seeing results

Laurila explained that with just a single satellite in early 2019, the company was able to provide monitoring of the Brumadinho dam failure in southeastern Brazil, which killed 248 people. Despite the often-cloudy skies over Brazil, the ICEYE satellite could monitor the progress of mud flows caused by the dam breach.

For these newest images of container terminal port operations, ICEYE wanted to demonstrate its high-resolution capabilities. Looking at ports in Nigeria, Australia, and elsewhere, the company was able to acquire and process images at up to 0.55-meter resolution, distinguishing details about the loading of crude oil and individual vessels. This kind of information is useful for independent estimates of oil reserves around the world.

Originally, the company planned to focus on ice monitoring in the Arctic for shipping and scientific purposes—hence the name ICEYE—but it has since branched out into a number of different applications, from the oil and gas industry to providing situation awareness for people on the ground during dynamic events such as the Brumadinho dam collapse. Further applications may reveal themselves when the company has a full constellation of five satellites operating in early 2020, Laurila said.

Listing image by ICEYE