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Australian outside sensing startupEsperwants to capture hyperspectral imagery from space at a fraction of the price of its rival .
The company , which will launch its first demonstration satellite today on SpaceX ’s Transporter-10 mission , is entering a field rife with competition . There ’s a reason for that : Hyperspectral is an improbably potent type of remote sensing engineering science that uses a spectrometer to name the spectral signature of object . This allows users to detect the chemical substance fingermark of many unlike substances , including mineral , chemical , gas and botany .
gird with just $ 1 million in pre - seed funding and assistance from the Australian government activity in their first mission , Esper is direct to beat outits better - capitalized compeer with lower - cost tech .
The goal of this first mission , called Over the Rainbow , is to corroborate the company ’s core technology on a demonstrator spacecraft : a spectrometer organization and proprietary software that “ read ” the spectral imagery . Esper is keeping costs low by using many off - the - shelf components and consumer - grade electronics , rather than more expensive optics system ; the software insure that the information is exact .
“ We are very much a wise sensor . That ’s what really separates us from all the other spectrometers and hyperspectral hardware that ’s being put up there , ” Esper CEO and co - founder Shoaib Iqbal said . “ We ’re a really low - cost piece of equipment because we ’re using a good deal of portion off the shelf , consumer - tier electronics , then we ’re organize it to be space ready . There ’s a lot of software system that really come into gambling to ensure it works that room . Otherwise , we ’re capturing spectral gibber and you ca n’t really make a lot of signified of that . ”
Esper was founded in former 2021 by Iqbal and Joey Lorenczak , who meet when they sit next to each other in a chemistry class at Monash University in Melbourne . The two participated in a number of hackathons together ; they ended up winning Unihack , a Melbourne student hackathon , in 2019 for a different outer space - focused idea , but swivel to Earth observation after living through a particularly crushing bushfire season that same year .
“ The totality of southeast Australia was burn , ” Iqbal said . “ We were like , hey , we ’re already working in space tech , so why not move to be focalise on Earth observation to forbid a lot of these disaster happening in the futurity . That ’s how we stumbled across hyperspectral . ”
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The two started getting traction from prospective customers both from the mining manufacture and from firm work in disaster response . This former reaction push the founders to “ go all in ” on hyperspectral , he said .
The troupe bring together the spring 2023 cohort of Techstars ’ space accelerator ; through that political platform , they met people in major U.S. government agencies concerned in purchase hyperspectral imagery , like the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office . ( The NRO has alreadystarted issuing study contractsto private hyperspectral providers , including startups . )
Along the way , the squad also closed the $ 1 million in financing from investors including Stellar Ventures , Day One Ventures and Dolby Family Ventures , as well as guarantee grants from Alexis Ohanian ’s 776 Foundation and the Australian Federal Government .
Esper is project on launching a second demonstrator satellite with identical hardware later this spring with India ’s ISRO . The startup aims to start plunge commercial payloads by late next year or early ’ 26 , and to have 18 satellites in celestial orbit , providing a daily revisit charge per unit , by 2028 .
