WASHINGTON — The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) awarded a contract Feb. 7 to Spire Global, partnered with OroraTech, to develop a constellation of cubesats to monitor wildfires.
CSA and other Canadian government officials announced that Spire’s Canadian subsidiary, Spire Global Canada, won a contract worth $72 million Canadian ($50.4 million) to develop 10 satellites for the WildFireSat constellation for launch in 2029.
The spacecraft will operate in dusk-dawn sun-synchronous orbits at an altitude of 475 kilometers. Equipped with sensors provided by OroraTech, a German company that operates its own fleet of wildfire-detection satellites, the spacecraft will track wildfires. The satellites, the CSA argued, can provide such tracking more effectively than aircraft, and the spacecraft will operate in an orbit that will fill a gap in current satellite observations in the late afternoon “peak burn period” for wildfires.
“Canada’s boreal forests experience some of the world’s largest and most intense wildfires. In recent years, these blazes have grown more frequent and devastating, which is increasing the threats,” said CSA President Lisa Campbell during an event at the agency’s headquarters to announce the contract. The agency noted that Canada spends about $1 billion per year fighting those wildfires.
“Once it is up and running, we will be able to provide data in near real-time,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, at the event. He projected the system would save Canada between $1 billion and $5 billion in wildfire-related costs over its five-year lifetime, reflecting uncertainty in how much overall wildfire-related costs are expected to grow in the coming decade.
There was some confusion at the announcement about how many satellites will be in the WildFireSat constellation. A CSA release said it would include seven satellites, while a separate statement from Spire did not include a number.
Joel Spark, a co-founder of Spire and director of Spire Global Canada, said at the announcement that the system would start with a “precursor” satellite launching in 2027 “to prove out this fundamental technology,” followed by nine operational satellites launching in 2029.
A CSA spokesperson told SpaceNews that the constellation will have seven active satellites and two on-orbit spares, along with an additional spare satellite on the ground. The spokesperson added that the precursor satellite is not considered part of the WildFireSat constellation.
The satellites will be 12-kilogram 8U cubesats, each equipped with two infrared cameras and one optical/near-infrared multiband camera. Spark said that the satellites will leverage the experience Spire and OroraTech have established developing satellites and their payloads for OroraTech’s commercial constellation.
However, he said the WildFireSat spacecraft will be built in Canada. “We will be expanding our existing Canadian office, based on Cambridge, Ontario, to import the technology that Spire Global and OroraTech have developed,” he said. That include creating satellite manufacturing and test facilities there and hiring “domestic talent” to build the spacecraft.
“While this capability will be initially dedicated to the WildFireSat mission,” he added, “it will give us a capability to deliver on future missions for Canadians.”
