Google Backs Privately Funded Satellite Constellation For Wildfire Detection 32
Google's philanthropic arm is partially funding a new initiative that "aims to deploy more than 50 small satellites in low-Earth orbit to pinpoint flare-ups as small as a classroom anywhere in the world," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The FireSat constellation, managed by a nonprofit called Earth Fire Alliance (EFA), will be the first satellite fleet dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. Google announced a fresh investment of $13 million in the FireSat constellation Monday, building on the tech giant's previous contributions to support the development of custom infrared sensors for the FireSat satellites. Google's funding commitment will maintain the schedule for the launch of the first FireSat pathfinder satellite next year, EFA said. The first batch of satellites to form an operational constellation could launch in 2026.
The FireSat satellites will be built by Muon Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup. Each of the Muon Space-built microsatellites will have six-band multispectral infrared instruments, eyeing a swath of Earth some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide, to pinpoint hotspots from wildfires. The satellites will have the sensitivity to find wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network will use Google AI to rapidly compare observations ofany area of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire, according to Google. AI will also take into account factors like nearby infrastructure and local weather in each fire assessment.
Google said it validated its detection model for smaller fires and established a baseline dataset for the AI by flying sensors over controlled burns. FireSat's partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation, and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program. After detecting a wildfire, it's crucial for FireSat to quickly disseminate the location and size of a fire to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice per day. "At full capability with 50+ satellites, the revisit times for most of the globe improve to 20 minutes, with the most wildfire-prone regions benefitting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes," Muon Space said in a statement. "Today's announcement marks a significant milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire," Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement. "As fires become more intense, and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration is key to driving much needed innovation in fire management and climate action."
The FireSat satellites will be built by Muon Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup. Each of the Muon Space-built microsatellites will have six-band multispectral infrared instruments, eyeing a swath of Earth some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide, to pinpoint hotspots from wildfires. The satellites will have the sensitivity to find wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network will use Google AI to rapidly compare observations ofany area of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire, according to Google. AI will also take into account factors like nearby infrastructure and local weather in each fire assessment.
Google said it validated its detection model for smaller fires and established a baseline dataset for the AI by flying sensors over controlled burns. FireSat's partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation, and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program. After detecting a wildfire, it's crucial for FireSat to quickly disseminate the location and size of a fire to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice per day. "At full capability with 50+ satellites, the revisit times for most of the globe improve to 20 minutes, with the most wildfire-prone regions benefitting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes," Muon Space said in a statement. "Today's announcement marks a significant milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire," Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement. "As fires become more intense, and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration is key to driving much needed innovation in fire management and climate action."
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Let's for a moment imagine you're serious.
Do you have any idea about power requirements of such a laser being beamed from a stable orbit all the way to the ground, through all the atmospheric dissipation and still have enough energy to light up a fire?
It would be way cheaper to just pay a bunch of nutjobs to go light up some fires.
It's a magnifying glass in reverse. (Score:2)
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I should've included "scattering" after "dissipation" I suppose. I just figured the problem of just powering the beam that can punch through dissipation alone would push the point on its own.
more data, more data, more data.... (Score:2)
Google proposing launching more satellites to get more data on everyone.
With infrared photography from space at 1/3 a meter resolution today, what can they identify reliably.
A car make, model and possibly year. A single person walking down the street, whether or not you walk to work, where you shop, etc.
Number of cars in a parking lot. Number of people attending a Political Party X meeting and how they got there, where many of them live, etc.
The wildfires is just a we are giving a social benefit cover for
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Low power communications and surveillance drones are the opposite of high power attack laser ones in terms of what they need to function.
Yes Google getting more intel on everyone (Score:2)
At what point are we still believing 'we are doing this for the children, planet, efficiency, pollution reduction, baby seals, ...' from big tech?
This is about capturing even more data on people, their habits, their possessions, the geography, etc. for big tech to monetize it, sell it to hedge funds, give it to federal agencies.
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Since you're clearly not smart enough to understand the problem on its own, let's try an analogy.
"So big tech has this personal electric scooter program with weight carrying capacity of one person. They will use them as artillery pieces wielding 406mm battleship guns that weigh several thousands of tons each, because they're evil".
Worth throwing tech at (Score:3)
This seems like something that is worth throwing tech at. There was a trial recently [lancsfirerescue.org.uk] using drones to monitor and suppress wildfires over here. Obviously it would take a lot of drones to cover the same area as a satellite, but on the other hand drones can detect smaller/earlier fires, and potentially put them out, which satellites can't do. I guess you might want to use a satellite constellation for 24/7/365 monitoring, and also deploy a drone fleet in the highest risk places during peak wildfire season.
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Either that or the tiny squirt of water would just evaporate on the several hundred mile drop, while the satellite would then have to contend with the delta-v the departing water would have left it as a parting gift. Not really seeing this as a viable plan.
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#BadPhysicsTakes
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Look at high-speed video of water falling through air sometime, and look at how it disperses from only 3 feet of falling. Now do 100 miles of falling, starting in vacuum and see how that works.
Also, equal and opposite reactions in microgravity - a pressurized release of water from a satellite is more accurately called "firing a maneuvering thruster."
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If you know about it early then it's small and it can be put out reasonably easily. That's actually what has gone wrong in lots of areas. The real problem is that if you keep doing that in some forest types, dead wood builds up without rotting away and then the fire when it does happen is bigger.
Hopefully they don't use that to completely stop fires but allow the burning which needs to happen to happen in the places where it's needed. In that case, it could be used to shift fires from seasons where they wou
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Agreed. It sounds suspiciously like the outdated "10 AM policy" thinking. Nearly a century of "find every fire and put it out immediately" has led, ironically enough, to much larger and more destructive fires to
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If your dad can't put out a 5x5 meter fire detected 9 within 9 minutes of it reaching that size, your dad needs a new job.
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Is there any point to having a pinpint-accurate location of a small fire, before it turns into a really big fire, which can then have a fleet of air tankers fly over it and douse the whole area?
Please think.
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Note that they can detect 25 square meter fires. That's smaller than the vertical cross section of a T-72. And it'll be updating globally in as little as 9 minutes. This is going to be such a boon for open source intelligence, toward a transparent battlefield.
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In the Pacific Northwest US, there's about 100 million acres of forest between northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Alaska has another 120 million acres.
Try to actively monitor that with drones. That solution doesn't scale the way satellite detection does.
Fire sats can also track combat. (Score:3)
https://www.bellingcat.com/res... [bellingcat.com]
Space junk (Score:3)
Yay! More space-trash!
Let's all launch our own constellations because everyone else is and is getting away with it!
This is a good thing, but... (Score:2)
...it's only a start
Instead of spending billions on weapons of war, we should redirect a substantial portion of the defense budget to fighting our real enemy, fire. I wonder what the reaction would have been if ISIS had destroyed Paradise CA? Military strategists imagine a future threat from China while an actual threat is destroying cities today
The Downside (Score:2)
I can see some positives to this, but the minor downside is that it risks making the deaths of Picard's brother and nephew in "Star Trek: Generations" seem even less believable than it already was, because I never bought that there wouldn't be some orbital fire detection and emergency beam-out protocols in place, and now we'll even already have half of that in our primitive early 21st century.
OR... (Score:3)
We revert to modern forestry management instead of letting the forest run wild.
Then, whaddya know No wildfires and no destruction.
Why? (Score:2)
Aren't the existing Earth resource satellites good enough? The ones that, 25 years ago, were so good that limber companies were against them, because they'd see that the so-called "replanting" of trees was bs?
Space Junk (Score:2)
We already have enough LEO satellites in orbit, so why not push that investment into augmenting those? SpaceX is launching dozens a month, why not just request a few cameras on them? They already have the network connectivity and know what kind of cameras can withstand space from previous launches.