Using its remote sensing Earth Observation technology, Terra Space Lab is working to detect fires before they explode. “We want to detect environmental events, and enable people to do something about them right away,” says CEO

Wildfires are spreading around the globe as climate conditions change. Dryer air, lack of moisture, a warming climate, and pollutants in the atmosphere are all contributing to the rapidly moving fires that are consuming forests and suburban dwellings. But one small Israeli space tech startup, Terra Space Lab, has a plan: to combat those fires before they explode by relying on remote sensing Earth observation technology from satellites to detect them early-on. “We started out with this idea to develop an early warning system for wildfires, and detect them as soon as possible to allow first responders to reach them faster, and suppress them before it is too late,” Terra Space Lab CEO and co-founder Meir Chen told CTech in an interview.

When a fire erupts, he explained, there is a window of opportunity to start putting it out, and if firefighters reach that window in time, they are more likely to be able to extinguish a blaze. “However, past that point where it ‘explodes', you reach a ‘firestorm’ - like in many California wildfires - and then you must wait until the fire consumes all the fuel material within it,” he said. Once that stage is reached, a fire is believed to be past a point of no return, and millions of dollars in revenue are lost as the fire wreaks havoc on biodiversity and people’s homes.

An illustration of Terra Space Lab's Earth observation satellite, monitoring forests.

(TSL)

Earth-and-space experts

TSL, however, aims to use satellites to detect those fires right when they first erupt. And much earlier than typical government bodies, like NASA, or other weather detection companies can. “We want to be able to detect events within a time frame that allows people to do something about it right away. NASA and other companies detect fires way too late,” he said.

When you throw several experts into a room, great things come into effect. Or so, the adage goes. Terra Space Lab was one of those creations, born from four veteran experts of the Israeli space tech industry: Moshe Shachar, who served in the Ministry of Defense’s Space and Satellite Administration Unit; Alex Silberklang, the former CTO of GE Healthcare Ultrasound Global; Chen, who served for 25 years in the Israeli Air Force and Ministry of Defense, and later went on to manage the R&D sector of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Space Division, and another undisclosed member. The company was founded in May 2020, in midst of a Covid lockdown, yet managed to pull together an extensive board featuring Hebrew University of Jerusalem experts Prof. Nir Shaviv of the physics department and Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld from the Earth Sciences Institute, who was also the only Israeli co-writer of the UN’s sixth report on climate change.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjo6bmyic