MOUNTAIN VIEW – Florida startup Mission Space is preparing to launch a space-weather sensor on the SpaceX Transporter-13 rideshare as soon as March 1.
The sensor, Zohar-1, hosted and operated by DPhi Space, will monitor solar activity, radiation levels and magnetospheric disturbances.
Miami-based Mission Space plans to establish a constellation of 24 Zohar sensors to meet industry and government demand for high-resolution, multipoint space weather measurement data, Alex Pospekhov, Mission Space CEO and founder, told SpaceNews by email. “These satellites will be distributed across two orbital planes, ensuring one is always positioned in the Polar Cusp region every hour.” (At the poles, Earth’s magnetic field dips toward the ground.)
Seed Round
Mission Space has closed $1.5 million of a $5 million seed round. A 2021 pre-seed round raised $1.1 million.
Space weather forecasting is “a data monopoly game: the first to launch the constellation and build the infrastructure will win,” Pospekhov said in a statement. “Even with half a constellation, in two years we will generate a thousand times more space weather data than humans have generated in the last 60. And the real-time data will let us develop machine-learning models based on it.”
Initial Zohar sensors include spectrometers and Cherenkov particle detectors. Future Mission Space payloads will include surface charge monitors, x-ray and gamma-ray spectrometers, and plasma probes.
“We see significant opportunities in providing services and selling data,” Pospekhov said. “Customers struggle to interpret existing data and need actionable insights to understand potential impacts on their operations.”
Specifically, Mission Space plans to support operational decision-making with mid-term forecasting model that incorporates public and private data sources to extend notice of solar flares and other events.
The Zohar constellation also will serve “as a short-term forecasting tool” that can detect solar flares as they happen and predict their impact on services and operations, Pospekhov said.
Switzerland-based Dphi Space designs, builds and launches rideshare platforms. Clustergate 1 on Transporter-13 is Dphi’s first commercial hosting platform.
