Finnish hyperspectral satellite specialist Kuva Space announced on 7 February 2024 that Jerry Welsh, the former CEO of ICEYE US, has joined the company as a board member and will lead its expansion efforts to become a leading provider of hyperspectral insights to the US government.
The company has also established a US subsidiary, Kuva Space US, in Fairfax, Virginia, with which it aims to broaden its market reach and serve US government and commercial customers.
Kuva Space noted in a press release that the global geospatial analytics market was estimated to be valued at USD 85 billion (EUR 79 billion) in 2023, with the United States representing the largest part of that market.
Hyperspectral solutions are a critical element of the geospatial analytics market because of the wealth of information they provide by combining hundreds of bands of spectral data with spatial information.
“One of the reasons I’m excited to work with Kuva Space is its plans to offer new spaceborne hyperspectral capabilities that nobody in the commercial space industry is currently providing,” Welsh was quoted as saying following his appointment. “Over the next year we will be expanding in the US to provide cutting-edge, robust, and reliable services and meet security and regulatory requirements to become a trusted partner to the US government.”
Kuva Space’s microsatellites, which are equipped with a patented hyperspectral camera, can monitor any material on Earth and its condition through its distinct spectral signature. Unique to the industry, the sensor can be tuned in orbit to optimise for a specific use case across a wide range of application requirements, including defence and safety, food security, agriculture, and environmental issues. In addition, Kuva Space claims its patented 2D snapshot imager provides a better signal-to-noise ratio than its competitors, resulting in higher-quality images for actionable results.
Kuva Space’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-powered analytics platform automatically transforms proprietary hyperspectral data and combines third-party data where needed to create analytics insights within 15 minutes. This enables customers to cost-effectively monitor, identify, and forecast changes and their impact in near real time.
“Unlike black-box AI models, Kuva Space’s AI platform can explain the ‘why’ behind an outcome and tailor their acquisition to meet the processing needs,” the company stated in a press release.
“I believe we will see increased combination and fusion of different data sets along with analytics to meet US government needs, and Kuva Space is poised to accelerate this innovation,” Welsh said.
As part of its next satellite generation, Kuva Space plans to integrate an edge computing capability as well as satellite-to-satellite and satellite-to-Internet of Things communications to improve in-orbit processing and reduce the delivery time of analytic insights to first responders.
“Kuva Space is on a mission to build the world’s most extensive hyperspectral satellite constellation and automatic AI-powered insights-as-a-service model,” the company stated. “With three successful satellite missions, Kuva Space will launch two hyperspectral satellites and its initial services in 2024. The first one, Hyperfield-1, is scheduled to launch in June 2024. This will mark the initial stage of Kuva Space’s planned constellation, which aims to provide gapless monitoring by deploying up to 100 satellites by 2030.”
Jarkko Antila, CEO of Kuva Space, was quoted as saying by the company, “On the back of our successful funding round last year, we’re extremely excited to take the next step and ramp up our US operations and bring Jerry on board. The US is a mature Earth observation market with established government and commercial collaboration models. On the other hand, we are building capabilities for the US market that are not currently offered. Our expansion to the US is a crucial step to build stronger partnerships and commercialise our cutting-edge defence and safety and commercial civil services.”
With local representation in Finland, the United States, Japan, Belgium and the United Kingdom, Kuva Space has raised USD 24 million in total funding from Morrow Portfolio, Voima Ventures, Nordic Foodtech VC, Earth VC, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and public funding from ESA Philab and Business Finland.
In 2023 Kuva Space was awarded a USD 5.4 million commercial contract to be the sole provider of hyperspectral data services for the EU’s Copernicus programme: the Earth observation component of the EU’s space programme. The company also won the NATO Innovation Challenge for its AI-driven analytics for enhanced Arctic monitoring capabilities.