sent<\/a> a demonstration satellite to orbit in March 2025. In October, the satellite picked up on a small roadside fire in Oregon that had previously gone undetected by other space-based monitoring systems.<\/p>\n\u201cIt started when somebody was dragging trailer chains behind their truck on the highway,\u201d Falkowski said. \u201cWe saw that in our data, and it just gave us evidence of FireSat\u2019s ability to get these cool, small fires before they become a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why they did it <\/p>\n
California-based space systems company Muon Space builds and operates the satellites in partnership with EFA, backed by funding from organizations like the Bezos Earth Fund and Google. Muon Space CEO Jonny Dyer was first introduced to the idea through researchers at Google who were working on wildfire detection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had identified that there\u2019s this huge data gap around wildfires that we actually have very poor information about where fires are when they start,\u201d Dyer told Gizmodo. \u201cOur business model is, somebody comes to us with a problem, and then we will kind of work end-to-end to solve that problem with satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are currently three main ways fire responders collect data on wildfires: through ground-based detection, aircraft or drones, and weather satellites. \u201cThe problem with the current satellites is that they\u2019re very low resolution, so they typically only see a fire once it\u2019s gotten very large, and they only get updates maybe every 12 hours and sometimes 24 hours,\u201d Dyer said. \u201cSo if you\u2019re trying to make decisions on the ground, that\u2019s really limiting.\u201d<\/p>\n
FireSat, on the other hand, collects high-resolution data and is able to see a fire with the intensity of a bonfire on a beach, which would allow fire responders to make real-time decisions on the ground. The satellite can spot tiny fires measuring just 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters), roughly the same size as a backyard swimming pool.<\/p>\n
Why they\u2019re a winner <\/p>\n
Since its launch, the FireSat constellation has been able to detect a range of fire types and sizes\u2014from small, relatively cool hotspots to a large, intense fire. Along the Oregon-Idaho border, the satellites collected data on the Big Grass Fire that had already burned 290,000 acres (about the size of Los Angeles) at the time of detection on July 28.<\/p>\n
![\"Big](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/big_grass_fire_20260628.1754_bands_2560px.jpg\")
In this image of the Big Grass Fire, each of the FireSat bands answers a different question. Credit: Earth-Fire Alliance <\/p>\n
Each of FireSat\u2019s 6 multispectral imaging bands reveals a different part of the fire, measuring vegetation condition, surface temperature, and fire dynamics to model the fire\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody\u2019s ever done a global comprehensive survey of fires in the world, and so we\u2019re now seeing fires that people didn\u2019t even know existed, which is super interesting,\u201d Dyer said. \u201cThese additional bands, the other wavelengths of light that we\u2019re looking in, are really useful for other things. Like, we can see the burn scar from historic fires by using a certain combination of those bands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using the different imaging bands, the team can determine which direction the fire is headed, how much vegetation there is, how wet or dry it is, and how hot and fast it\u2019s burning. \u201cThe detection and tracking of the wildfire boundary is the primary goal, but we really design the system to cover what we call the full life cycle of fires,\u201d Dyer said. \u201cThese bands are really useful for assessing damage from fires and then helping inform what the right next steps to take are.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next <\/p>\n
The first three satellites are currently in the commissioning phase, and the team is continuing to learn more about their operations before launching the rest of the constellation.<\/p>\n
The satellites are positioned at an altitude of 370 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth, circling our planet once every 1.5 hours. Early operational data from the three satellites are currently being delivered to EFA\u2019s early adopters of global fire agencies, modelers, and scientists.<\/p>\n
By next year, FireSat will expand its data availability to support research on wildfires. Eventually, the goal is to integrate FireSat data directly into active firefighting and modeling workflows. Through a partnership with SpaceX, Muon Space is also working to integrate Starlink\u2019s laser terminals into the satellites to be able to stream the data in real time.<\/p>\n
\u201cFireSat\u2019s going to really shift our understanding of how much fire is on the planet and how it behaves and interacts with climate,\u201d Falkowski said. \u201cInsights from those data will ultimately be fed into doing research that helps improve wildfire management and resilience strategies globally. So, it\u2019s really insane the data that we\u2019re going to be getting from these satellites, and how I see it in the next five or 10 years, really pushing forward global fire science.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team <\/p>\n
Brian Collins, executive director of the Earth-Fire Alliance; Michael Falkowski, chief scientist; Courtney Oliver, director of the FireSat program office; Sean Triplett, director of the Data Integrations and Operations program office; Ann Kapusta, early adoption and community engagement lead; Jonny Dyer, CEO of Muon Space; Paul Day, co-founder and vice-president of engineering at Muon Space; Dan McCleese, co-founder and chief scientist at Muon Space; Yossi Matias, vice president of Google Research; and Juliet Rothenberg, product director of climate AI efforts at Google Research.<\/p>\n
Click here<\/a> to see all of the winners of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earth Fire Alliance is a winner of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair for developing a satellite constellation dedicated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,106785,20265,20410,105,4357],"class_list":["post-913643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gizmodo-science-fair","tag-satellite-imagery","tag-satellites","tag-technology","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}