Sceye partners with NASA and the USGS to monitor wildfires and storms from the edges of space.

Aerospace startup Sceye has partnered with NASA and the USGS to deploy climate management tools to monitor wildfires and storms from the edges of space, the company and government agencies told Reuters on Tuesday.

The solar-powered Sceye High Altitude Platform System (HAPS) looks like an airship and can carry a wide array of sensors for Earth observation and disaster response.

This is part of a joint research and development agreement between the three organizations signed in 2021, without any exchange of money.

As part of the deal, NASA, the USGS and Sceye will explore sensing capabilities and test the reliability of the hyperspectral imaging system in the stratosphere.

HAPS, which can hover at altitudes of more than 60,000 feet, promises to be a cheaper and more efficient alternative to satellites and surveillance equipment operating on small aircraft.

Satellites in orbit with similar capabilities require expensive rockets that are in short supply and are not designed to return from space, and small aircraft have operating time limitations.

Conversely, the Sceye platform can take off from the cosmodrome to the desired altitude in about half an hour.

“We’re about 10 times cheaper than the alternative because the alternative is to use Cessna planes that take off and land with a human pilot,” Mikkel Frandsen told Reuters in an interview, adding that the HAPS system costs less than 10 million dollars. build.

The company, founded by Frandsen in 2014, announced a late-stage fundraising in September, valuing the startup at $525 million in pre-money and giving the company enough liquidity to launch commercial operations next year.

The Sceye platform offers an advantage over alternatives because it can carry multiple payload types, which would add millions of dollars to the satellite’s weight and resulting launch cost.

“(HAPS) is unique in the sense that it has the ability to lift into the stratosphere what we call a multi-mission payload, which is many different sensors,” Jonathan Stock, director of the USGS National Innovation Center, told Reuters.

Stock said Sceye’s platform can continuously collect critical and highly detailed data on environmental events such as wildfires, hurricanes and earthquakes, which can make forecasts more accurate and reliable while being “orders of magnitude cheaper.”