constellr secures $10M in Seed financing co-led by Lakestar and VSquared to scale its space-based water monitoring system and safeguard global food supply.

Cassi Welling

Freiburg, Germany, 2 November 2022 – constellr, a space data and services company building the world’s first globally scalable crop water monitoring system to help ensure global food security, today announces $10M in seed funding. Lakestar and VSquared co-led the financing round, with participation from early and new supporters FTTF, IQT, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, EIT Food, OHB Venture Capital, Next Humanity, and Seraphim. With this investment, constellr will develop its first two satellites, conclude its existing pilot programs and develop its processing platform.

Food and water insecurity will increasingly be among the greatest challenges faced by society. By 2050, the United Nations estimates that 50% more food will be needed by the Earth’s population, leading to a water increase of 40% by the end of this decade. Of all the world’s freshwater, an incredible 70% is used in agriculture of which an estimated 60% goes to waste due to inefficient irrigation and planting methods, equating to an astonishing 40% of global freshwater.

Our inability to measure the water needed in agriculture is a massive contributing factor to this problem. Non-sustainable water use globally costs €220B a year and is expected to reach a staggering €2T by the end of the decade – the equivalent of only eight harvests away. We’re seeing an entire paradigm shift taking place as water becomes an increasingly scarce resource and the limiting factor in food production.

Spearheaded by researchers Max Gulde, Marius Bierdel and Christian Mittermaier, constellr was spun out of the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI with the mission to mitigate the impending food gap. By using microsatellites to monitor the Earth’s surface temperature and soon also its chemical composition, constellr’s technology can robustly derive water need and water availability across every field on the globe, every single day. Unlike existing satellites, constellr's microsatellites go beyond visual imaging to identify stress symptoms before crops are damaged. Consequently, constellr allows earlier response times across high-precision agriculture, crop health monitoring and sustainable resource management compared to current space-based systems.

constellr’s satellite images provide high-precision data that can be used, for example, to determine the water requirements of crops that have already been cultivated. Therefore, an impending drought can be recognized much earlier than with existing methods and fast enough to implement effective mitigative actions such as targeted irrigation. This method optimizes and reduces water consumption while increasing crop yield per litre of water used. Crop health and yield is particularly sensitive to heat, so constellr’s monitoring system offers the opportunity to massively improve early crisis detection, with knock-on effects across supply chain management and commodity trading. By providing the central dataset for agriculture to build reliable forecasts, constellr is helping to determine yield more robustly and much earlier, and avoid potentially catastrophic supply chain effects.

constellr facilitates the saving of up to 40% of water and reduces the risk of crop loss, driving towards an environmentally positive agricultural system. Within five years, constellr expects to leverage 60 billion tons in water savings, thereby avoiding 14 megatons of CO2 being emitted and generating billions of Euros in gross benefits for farmers.

The team has worked relentlessly on all fronts, removing obstacle after obstacle, getting a first camera in space and pilot customers onboard. And now, we are incredibly proud to partner with what will become our mission control: Lakestar, VSquared, FTTF and IQT for deep tech, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, EIT Food and Next Humanity for agriculture, and Seraphim, OHB Venture Capital and Spacebel for space. Together, we just ignited the second stage towards a global water monitoring system,
says constellr Co-Founder and CEO Max Gulde.

constellr is currently working with large agrifood, agrichemistry and smart irrigation organizations. It has a rapidly growing number of pilot programmes in place with clients, allowing farmers to drastically reduce monitoring costs, while improving the reliability and availability of their crop health assessments.

As a result of the higher demand for food, less land being available for agricultural production and changing environmental conditions, the likelihood of increasingly strict regulations being applied to the use of water and fertilizer is very high. This further emphasizes the need for scalable monitoring solutions. With satellites the size of a small refrigerator and the injection of fresh capital, constellr anticipates to be able to answer this need within 18 months.

constellr’s team is growing rapidly, having doubled in the last six months. It currently counts over 40 team members with roots in aerospace engineering, insurance, clean tech, finance and data science. It has a combined contribution to over 20 space missions, including several constellations.

Climate change is the fundamental challenge our generation is facing and, in our efforts to combat its effects, we must ensure the global food and water systems are more resilient. Never has there been a greater need for scalable monitoring solutions like that offered by constellr. We’re thrilled to join their journey in building cloud-based space infrastructure that will enable European leadership to effectively monitor agriculture
says Lakestar’s Venture Partner leading Deep Tech investments, Steven Jacobs, who will join the board.
Despite being a young company, we believe constellr is already well positioned to become one of the leaders in the next generation of earth observation solution providers. We followed the team for almost two years before making this investment and are impressed with the culture and their ability to execute and build on their ambitions on the technical as well as the commercial side. For us, this is the first time we invest in an earth observation business, having invested only in space infrastructure cases previously
says Herbert Mangesius, VSquared’s founding partner.

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Press Contact

Tom Climie
e | tom.climie@kekstcnc.com
t | +44 7760 160 248

Marisa Wagner
e | marisa.wagner@kekstcnc.com
t | +49 152 543 727 77

About constellr

constellr is a German deep-tech start-up from Freiburg that operates at the interface of Earth Observation and agriculture. A spin-off of the Fraunhofer, Europe’s largest organization for applied science, constellr is dedicated to supporting global food security in times of climate change. Based on a proprietary space infrastructure with unique sensing capabilities, constellr offers precise and plot-level water monitoring for the agricultural sector worldwide. As a space data and services company, constellr is leading the way in delivering daily, global land surface temperature data for the agri-tech industry. constellr provides the fundamental global data for smart crop monitoring, identifying changes in crop health days to weeks before they become visible and enabling farmers to react early to and mitigate for potential crop risks and losses. This advanced warning means the risk of crop failure or damage is significantly reduced, allowing more accurate crop yield forecasting and thus better stability and management across supply chains.

Visit us on LinkedIn and our website www.constellr.space

About Lakestar

Lakestar’s mission is to find, fund and grow disruptive businesses - enabled by technology - that are founded by exceptional entrepreneurs in Europe and beyond. Founded by Klaus Hommels, the team’s early investments include Skype, Spotify, Facebook and Airbnb. Since raising its first fund in 2012, Lakestar manages an aggregated volume of over €1.2bn across three early stage funds and a growth fund.

The team actively advises and supports portfolio companies in marketing, recruitment, technology, product development and regulatory insight, accompanying founders from seed to early stage to growth stage or exit. Lakestar currently has the privilege of holding investments in Revolut, Blockchain.com, Opendoor, Oscar, GetYourGuide, sennder, Eigen, Public.com, SoFi, Solarisbank, Uncapped, Yapily, Terra Quantum, accuRx, Rhino, ZEBEDEE and Hometogo to name a few. Lakestar has presence in Berlin, Zurich and London.

Visit us on LinkedIn and our website www.lakestar.com

About Vsquared Ventures

Based in Europe's deep tech hub Munich, Vsquared Ventures supports ambitious founders and start-ups that set out to make the seemingly impossible possible. Vsquared Ventures finds and funds companies that have the potential to become global leaders in future markets emerging through technological breakthroughs. Portfolio start-ups include companies such as Isar Aerospace, IQM Quantum Computing and INBRAIN Neuroelectronics. Prior to founding Vsquared Ventures, General Partners Thomas Oehl, Herbert Mangesius and Benedikt von Schoeler led the activities of deep tech pioneer Vito Ventures.

Visit us on LinkedIn and our website www.vsquared.vc

Media Packs

(incl. logos, images etc.)
> constellr Standard Press Kit

constellr Acquires Hyperspectral Firm ScanWorld in a Move Set to Disrupt the Use of Beyond-Visual Data in Smart Farming Worldwide.

Simon Pacheco Wolf

German thermal remote sensing specialist, constellr, has acquired Belgian hyperspectral firm ScanWorld, in a first for Europe’s emerging agricultural Earth Observation (EO) sector. The transaction will enable actionable monitoring across the full spectrum of water, carbon, energy and crop health and represents a pioneering step for fusing technological capabilities in the sector.

The acquisition of ScanWorld will accelerate constellr’s plans to become the European market leader in beyond-visual data services - starting with thermal - for smart farming. New use cases range from irrigation optimisation to soil organic carbon assessment and beyond. ScanWorld’s world class hyperspectral product development know-how augments constellr’s thermal infrared and data processing capabilities. These existing and future proprietary datasets will help further leverage and augment the value of public programmes such as Landsat and Copernicus.

Building on the existing partnership between constellr and ScanWorld, constellr saw the opportunity to merge the core offering of the two companies to provide an unprecedented planetary health monitoring service. The high quality and revisit of this combined data will bridge gaps in current data streams and allow for advanced data integration and fusion.

"We believe there is no current provider able to bring this joint imaging and analytics capacity to the market in the timescales that we can. This is a game-changer for the sector.”
says Max Gulde, CEO of constellr.

The potential for tapping into diverse markets and addressing new applications with this fusion of infrared and hyperspectral imaging is huge. Digital smart farming is currently highly dependent on vegetation indices that draw on visual indicators of crop health, often showing damage rather than mitigable stress symptoms. constellr’s highly precise thermal monitoring service will provide days to weeks earlier warning of crop stress at field level, using temperature as a strong indicator of plant health. With hyperspectral, the company can go steps further in terms of measurement accuracy and quantification to map and model diverse agricultural characteristics at various scales.

This combination of technologies unlocks a range of potential use cases, such as enhancing crop yield by better understanding the varying influences of stress at different growth phases; optimizing irrigation via access to both evapotranspiration and soil moisture measurements; detecting disease through changes in leaf and cell structure and photosynthetic activity; optimizing fertilization practices through a more detailed look at the relation between growth phase, root water uptake and nitrate supply. Critically, the acquisition brings the company closer to addressing the emerging global need for soil quality monitoring, at scale, unlocking a more innovative, climate-resilient agri-food supply chain.

“Our team is delighted to take the collaboration to a new level, leveraging our highly complementary technologies to enter new markets and offer wide-ranging benefits to constellr’s customers in the agricultural space and beyond.”
enthuses Guerric de Crombrugghe, former ScanWorld General Manager, who will now lead product development at constellr, putting customer value at the heart of the company’s strategic priorities.

The transaction brings on board ScanWorld’s former shareholders, SPACEBEL S.A. (Belgium), to complement constellr’s strong set of existing investors, FTTF, OHB Venture Capital, Amathaon Capital and Next Humanity Ventures; and as well offers a new European capital as a recruitment location for constellr expanding team.

The longer term implications for remote sensing in monitoring and addressing economic and social as well as environmental and climate risks to food supply are considerable and have been emphasized by the recent conflict in Ukraine. Novel data sources along with new commercial capabilities in data fusion such as that planned by constellr and ScanWorld will help mobilize longer term thinking and planning for food security as well as accelerate the development and take-up of data from future public remote sensing missions.

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About constellr

constellr is a NewSpace data and services company leading the way in delivering a daily, global beyond-visual monitoring service for the agricultural sector. The company provides the fundamental global data for smart crop monitoring, identifying changes in crop health days to weeks before they become visible and enabling producers and other players across the supply chain to react early to and mitigate for potential crop risks and losses. This drives a reduction in uncertainty in crop yield forecasting, in turn limiting price volatility, improving logistics planning and increasing transparency across agri-food supply chains.

constellr launched its first thermal infrared sensing system into orbit in February this year and already has pilot customers using its first imaging data in Europe and the US. ScanWorld’s Brussels and Liège based teams are already collaborating closely with the constellr’s data processing and product development teams in Germany to help bring the first suite of thermal products to market. The next phase of joint technology and product development is to kick off in the coming months.

About ScanWorld

ScanWorld is a NewSpace and AgTech company focused on the delivery of affordable, hassle-free and easily accessible satellite imagery and analytics. Its products aim to optimize input management, maximize yield, and promote good environmental stewardship. The company is building an infrastructure to provide high-quality Level 2 hyperspectral imagery, multiple times per week, for any point of the globe. This enables a wide range of applications such as soil organic carbon estimation, early disease alerts, or even water and fertilizers management.

Quotations from Investors
Quote from Amathaon

“We're thrilled to be supporting constellr’s growth and look forward to an extremely bright future for this outstanding team and product. With the acquisition of ScanWorld, the team is steps closer to building a real-time atlas of our biosphere. This joint technology will be a revolution in earth observation for a new generation of farming and land stewardship”

Quote from OHB SE

“We are very much thrilled by this acquisition. The combination of both TIR and hyperspectral space technologies embedded in micro-satellites will enable unique and unprecedented data products and services with very high added value for humankind. At OHB, the worldwide leader for hyperspectral space systems (Prisma, EnMAP, Copernicus CHIME), we are delighted by the perspective to get soon companions to our hyperspectral satellites in orbit contributing to the further growth of the EO downstream market.” Sebastien Tailhades, Domain Manager Earth Observation at OHB SE

Quote from FTTF

“We are very excited to have bundled two european spacetech innovations, which generate an even stronger use case for various customer groups on a global scale.” Tobias Schwind, Managing Director, Fraunhofer Technologie-Transfer Fonds (FTTF) GmbH

Quote from SPACEBEL

“Merging ScanWorld with constellr technologies is THE solution to efficiently reach the ultimate purpose ScanWorld stands for, i.e. tackle worldwide challenges in sustainable agriculture, forestry, and environmental monitoring. As a new shareholder of constellr, SPACEBEL is pleased to contribute to this new dimension as it allows us to reinforce our deployment in Europe while offering us indirectly the opportunity to help to build a sustainable future for our planet Earth and its inhabitants.” Thierry du Pré-Werson, Managing Director of SPACEBEL

Media Contact Details

Cassi Welling, Chief Operations Officer
e | cassi@constellr.space
t | +49(0)170 7750 148
w | https://constellr.space/
in | https://www.linkedin.com/company/constellr/

Media Packs

(incl. logos, images etc.)
> constellr Standard Press Kit

First light: constellr’s thermal images demonstrate high potential for enhanced agricultural monitoring from space

Simon Pacheco Wolf

Following the successful launch of its first thermal infrared monitoring payload in February to the International Space Station (ISS), constellr saw its LisR instrument returning first thermal images to earth last week. First processing of results reveals the images are well focused, sharp and allow for good feature detection, allowing for an unprecedented view on streets, rivers, fields and specific urban and rural land uses, hinting at their strong potential to support operational land management.

A series of in-field agricultural pilot demonstrations based on this first data from LisR is already planned for the 2022 growing season. These will take place across Europe and North America, with customers from EO analytics, agribusiness and research sectors set to understand how timely thermal satellite imagery can improve their practices. .

“Since the launch of LisR, we have seen a significant market pull, with international prospects approaching us to test our data across a range of commercial agricultural applications”
Dr. Lina Hollender, Chief Commercial Officer at constellr.

constellr’s first infrared camera captures data from across the planet within two thermal infrared bands. From this information, along with additional earth observation data, it is possible to derive the Land Surface Temperature (LST), a key environmental variable at the heart of water, carbon, and energy cycles.

In order to bring the most value to customers in the agricultural industry and support a more resilient and sustainable agri-food system, it is necessary to provide a high level of geometric and radiometric precision allowing the accurate determination of LST. From precise LST, it is possible to derive higher-level products such as evapotranspiration much more reliably than is currently possible today.

The FAO (2020) estimates that irrigated areas in sub-Saharan Africa will more than double by 2050. Equipping these areas with robust thermal data will help optimise irrigation practices and significantly maximise yield. Since agriculture is responsible for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals, whilst two thirds of the world’s population will face water shortages by 2025, being able to optimise the use of water based on new, affordable, datasets is critical.

constellr’s LisR mission focuses primarily on the demonstration of the company’s patent-pending TIR monitoring technology. Already this first payload can provide a high resolution imaging stream to feed to customers however. constellr is about to launch a new digital platform through which customers will be able to access a harmonised stream of thermal data, collected from a range of sources, now including LisR. This significantly augments the viability of the current thermal infrared offer for commercial applications.

LisR’s goal, to provide high resolution LST data, is similar to NASA’s Ecostress mission, which collects data mainly over US soil. Whilst capable of collecting globally and already providing much more geometric detail (80 m) than Sentinel-3 (1000 m), LisR is limited by the ISS orbit and swath width of 25 km which cannot guarantee a regular pass over of the same region at the same time of day (ideal for agriculture applications). These limitations will vanish with the launch of the company’s satellite constellation, the first phase of which starts in 2023, ramping up to a capability of daily revisit by 2024.

“We are thrilled with the performance of LisR’s ‘first light’ imagery. Our goal is to aim for the same level of radiometric accuracy as NASA´s Ecostress system: we’re continuing to evaluate this and look forward to presenting more detailed characteristics of the data at the 4S Symposium in Portugal as well as the Living Planet Symposium in Bonn, in May”
says Marius Bierdel, constellr’s CTO.

constellr is currently hiring - visit our careers page for the latest open positions.

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About constellr

constellr is a NewSpace data and services company leading the way in delivering a daily, global water monitoring service. constellr provides the fundamental global data for smart crop monitoring, identifying changes in crop health days to weeks before they become visible and enabling farmers to react early to and mitigate for potential crop risks and losses. This allows customers to reduce uncertainty in crop yield forecasting, limiting price volatility, improving logistics planning and increasing transparency across agri-food supply chains.

Media Contact Details

Cassi Welling, Chief Operations Officer
e | cassi@constellr.space
t | +49(0)170 7750 148
w | https://constellr.space/
in | https://www.linkedin.com/company/constellr/

Media Packs

> constellr Standard Press Kit
> constellr Launch Media Pack - for information purposes only

German NewSpace Startup, constellr, launches their first agricultural water monitoring system into orbit.

Simon Pacheco Wolf

Freiburg, Germany

On Saturday 19th February 2022, German NewSpace company constellr successfully launched their first thermal infrared earth observation system into space for global water monitoring. The payload was launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, part of the Northrop Grumman resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The novel payload, LisR (Longwave Infrared Sensing demonstratoR), is the first of its kind to be launched by constellr and is a precursor to its full constellation of microsatellites, the first generation of which will be launched end of 2023. It paves the way for a scalable, commercial water monitoring service for smart agriculture based on the detection of changes in crop health days to weeks before current approaches.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN and the World Wildlife Fund, agriculture consumes 70 percent of the world's available freshwater. 60 percent of this water is wasted however, due to ill-maintained irrigation systems, inefficient application methods and crops that require more water than their environment allows. This is where constellr’s technology will be so relevant: their coloured land surface temperature heatmaps, depicted across a scale of blue, turquoise, yellow, orange and red represent various scales of plant stress and water availability at sub-field level. This level of insight helps in the optimisation of smart irrigation systems, the detection of potential threats to yield and the early mitigation of crop stress.

These kinds of maps and measured biophysical indicators have the potential to disrupt global agricultural practices and could in the future improve weather models, optimise urban planning and drive more effective disaster management.
Dr. Max Gulde, CEO of constellr

Founded in 2020, constellr has grown from three founders to over 25 employees across aerospace engineering and data science, software development and commercial teams. The company draws on a heritage of over 20 space missions and brings critical industry experience from a range of industry heavyweights including OHB, Planet, MunichRe, Honeywell and Ernst & Young.

The team’s patented space-based technology will deliver high-precision, granular crop health data, allowing the derivation of evapotranspiration and other biophysical factors that help determine biosphere health. This information offers the potential to enhance precision agriculture on a global basis and deliver actionable insights faster and more cost efficiently than existing solutions.

This demonstrator technology provides the first thermal datastream for constellr, with the goal that the data will be utilised by their pilot clients as early as April 2022. The technology will allow the team to understand more about how its thermal infrared system performs in space whilst allowing agri-analytics customers to pilot the use of a novel, calibrated thermal EO dataset and guide the design of future monitoring products. It represents a first step in constellr’s vision to build a deeper atlas of the planet’s ecosphere, driving a better understanding of global resources, more crop per drop and a strong contribution to global food security.

constellr anticipates large agri-food companies including Bayer Crop Sciences, BayWa and Ferrero, as well as governments and global agricultural research groups to be among their future clients. For such customers, the scalability and high precision of constellr’s data in supporting yield monitoring, prediction and management, will be key.

When plants are in bad shape they wilt and change colour, by which point it is already too late to take mitigative action. Thanks to the infrared technology with which constellr’s satellites will be equipped, it will be possible to detect early signs of water stress up to two weeks earlier. This can help prevent long-term crop damage, over-watering and water waste.
Dr. Max Gulde, CEO of constellr
Together with a world class team at OHB, constellr is taking on the challenge of scaling down the size and cost of a normally very complex payload while maintaining the very high performance required so that we can be complementary with large institutional missions, with the added benefit of a higher revisit time. The LiSR demonstrator is an important first milestone in this technology evolution and we look forward to continuing working together in the future.
Egbert Jan van der Veen, Managing Director of OHB Venture Capital & Head of Strategy at OHB Group.

constellr is a spin-out from Germany’s Fraunhofer institute. The company’s innovative first payload has been designed and developed in partnership with Fraunhofer EMI, Fraunhofer IOF, SpaceOptix and IR Nova and with the support of Nanoracks, BMWi, EXIST, LZN and the Digital Innovation Hub Photonics.

constellr counts Amathaon Capital, OHB Ventures and FTTF among its investors and is working closely with partners OHB, Nanoavionics, Exolaunch and the European Space Agency to de-risk its ongoing technology development. The team and its advisors are based across the globe in Germany, Sweden, Canada, the UK, France, Italy and the US.

For further details on the constellr launch, the LisR system, and learn more about potential commercial applications, please view the Launch Media Pack below.

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About constellr

constellr is a NewSpace data and services company leading the way in delivering a daily, global water monitoring service. constellr provides the fundamental global data for smart crop monitoring, identifying changes in crop health days to weeks before they become visible and enabling farmers to react early to and mitigate for potential crop risks and losses. This allows customers to reduce uncertainty in crop yield forecasting, limiting price volatility, improving logistics planning and increasing transparency across agri-food supply chains.

Media Contact Details

Cassi Welling, Chief Operations Officer
e | cassi@constellr.space
t | +49(0)170 7750 148
w | https://constellr.space/
in | https://www.linkedin.com/company/constellr/

Media Packs

> constellr Launch Media Pack
> constellr Standard Press Kit

Faces Of constellr: Our In-Orbit Demonstrator (IOD) Team

Simon Pacheco Wolf

Last week we invited you to join the #constellrCountdown: on the 19th of February 2022, constellr plans to launch its first thermal infrared camera, LisR, into space. This week we met with some of the In-Orbit Demonstrator (IOD) Team to find out more about their respective roles in the programme, their route to launch and details of how our payload has received NASA approval and is fit-for-launch into space.

If you’d like to contribute to this ongoing mission to apply space technology to a growing downstream market need across smart farming, climate monitoring and resource protection, please take a look at our latest job posts on LinkedIn. We’re hiring for the following roles:

Marius, Atin & Philipp: some faces of constellr’s IOD Team

Our team regularly works with industry stakeholders and technology partners to collaborate on the development of our technology. Organisations such as Fraunhofer EMI Institute, Nanoracks, Fraunhofer IOF, IR Nova and SpaceOptix have provided critical engineering or product support and we will share more on these partnerships in due course.

constellr's vision is to advance understanding of the planet's ecosystems, enabling a more equitable and sustainable future governance of global resources. The first step in our mission is the provision of a robust data basis to drive 'more crop per drop' and help feed 10 billion people by 2050 (UN).

Our first thermal space system, LisR, is a Long Wave Infrared Camera system developed and built by constellr in collaboration with the Fraunhofer EMI Institute and others. It will fly on the Nanoracks External Platform (NREP) on the (Japanese Experimental Platform Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) bound to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch of the system is planned for February 19th, 2022. The camera will then be installed and be ready for commissioning (first light) on March 7th 2022.

Thanks and kudos to the entire IOD team and our partners for your hard work. See you all on the launch pad.

~Simon

‘Launching’ into the new year and beyond

Simon Pacheco Wolf

January is of course the time for retrospectives and resolutions. With our Janus hat on, we constellrians had a lot to reflect on from 2021 but even more to get excited about for the upcoming year 2022.

2022: #constellrCountdown to Launch

    The more perceptive among you might have noticed we’ve got some big upcoming news to share. On 19th February 2022 we plan to launch our first thermal infrared camera into space. This represents an important step for the commercial EO data market; the launch of the first demonstrator mission for global water monitoring from space.

    We plan a series of informative blogs and events over the coming weeks to deep-dive into our satellite technology, our team and why thermal infrared monitoring is such a critical service for agriculture and other adjacent markets.

    Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter & Instagram so you don’t miss a beat.

Dec '21: Paris, (more) Partners & Punks

  • Following our trip to Houston in October, we received the final sign-off from NASA that our system is fit for launch. The #constellrcountdown to launch begins.
  • Just as we were talking about the spillover effects of #newspace we joined the new cross-industry Federation of German Industry (BDI) NewSpace Initiative.
  • Our CEO Max Gulde attended World Satellite Business Week in Paris, sharing thoughts alongside our friends at ScanWorld, TerraMetric, EOS DATA ANALYTICS, and Granular, on a panel about powering the future of precision farming with EO data. Read our debrief from Paris here.
  • We were finalists in the Bayer Crop Science & Agri-Tech competition at Hello Tomorrow a second trip to Paris to meet investors and enjoy some french fries (which are, incidentally, Belgian)..
  • Our CEO Max Gulde was voted a "future shaper" by Business Punk Magazine alongside 99 other funders, makers, and creatives to keep an eye on this 2022.
  • We announced our final partnership of the year, with geospatial data platform cloudeo, with the aim of enhancing their agri-insurance product.
  • We also shared our yearly calendar, highlighting the most important events this 2021, you can check our calendar here or here.
  • Our final team event of the year saw a hike through the beautiful snowy mountains of the black forest, ending with glühwein and…of course… a BBQ.

We’re looking forward to sharing more on our journey to launch over the coming weeks. The entire team is thankful for the support of our investors, technology and commercial partners, beta customers and allies over the past year(s) to help us get to the point of “we’re launching to space next month”.

~Simon

November: NASA, Networking & Newbies

Simon Pacheco Wolf

November was a busy month for events (closer to home than October: Bremen, Paris), partnerships (also close to home: Germany, Greece), and for getting closer to space, with our team in Houston delivering our final optical payload for tests and approval by NASA for launch early next year. Big steps towards our mission to monitor the globe in the thermal infrared.

Progress

  • Part of our team spent some of November in Houston, USA, successfully undertaking final safety and electrical tests and overseeing the subsequent handover to NASA of our first commercial thermal infrared payload - LisR - for launch to the International Space Station in February next year. This marks both the successful end of a design and development phase and the start of an exciting countdown to launch for our in-orbit demonstrator. A lot more on this to follow...

Events and Networking

  • Our CEO Max Gulde, joined a panel at Space Terminal Online Summit, to discuss how farmers and those at the center of the food production industry can be best supported by satellite data.
  • constellr was at the Space Tech Expo EU in Bremen, observing new trends, partnerships, and innovation across both ‘old and NewSspace. We met the usual suspects across our broad partner network and discussed the role of #eo and its role in driving environmental sustainability together with ESA and Aistech Space. Read our write-up on LinkedIn here.
  • Our COO, Cassi Welling, presented constellr at the 1E9 conference, where she shared how constellr contribute to changing the system with our next-generation temperature monitoring technology.

New Hires

  • We're thrilled to have Dr. Riccardo Benvenuto onboard as our Constellation Programme Manager. Although he joined the team a few months ago, we published a short interview with him on his past endeavors and his vision for the future with us here.
  • To wrap things up: we're hiring! We published a handful of technical positions and would be keen to hear from you if you think you are the perfect candidate: career@constellr.space.
  • Partnerships

    • We were delighted to announce a new partnership with Mayday.ai. An alliance that will help provide an unprecedented common operating picture for risk and disaster management, helping take disaster management towards preemptive and prevention and away from reaction and recovery. Read more here.
    • Our latest partnership with cloudeo just slipped into December, but we’ll share it now since we’re excited about it! constellr will provide high-resolution, high-accuracy thermal infrared data for cloudeo's agriculture, oil & gas, and maritime customers, augmenting its geospatial marketplace and supporting the development of GeoInsurance, cloudeo’s agri-insurance product. Read more about the partnership here.

    We're looking forward to what December holds and will be sharing something festive in the coming weeks to celebrate everything that was 2021.

    See you soon!

    ~Simon

constellr partners with geospatial experts cloudeo

Simon Pacheco Wolf

New partnership with thermal satellite company constellr augments cloudeo’s geospatial marketplace, brings higher accuracy and localisation to its crop insurance product.

constellr announces a new partnership with geospatial experts cloudeo to help augment cloudeo's geospatial marketplace with unprecedented resolution and accuracy thermal infrared imaging data and bring higher accuracy and localization to its crop insurance product.

The agreement between the two geospatial data companies brings both commercial and technical advantages. constellr’s high-resolution thermal infrared data will be made available to cloudeo’s broad network of geospatial partners through the cloudeo marketplace, allowing customers in agriculture, oil & gas and maritime markets to exploit new, value-adding data layers which offer higher accuracy and better spatial resolution.

The partnership also allows cloudeo to enhance its Geo-Insurance product, an automated service delivering insights on crop health to insurance companies. constellr’s global temperature monitoring products and strong data science capabilities will help enhance the quality and accuracy of cloudeo’s crop damage monitoring and day-to-day farm management services, covering drought monitoring, heatwave- or frost-damage identification, and cost-effective irrigation insights. The performance of cloudeo’s crop type classification deep learning pipeline is also expected to be enhanced.

Based in Germany, constellr is pioneering the use of space-based thermal infrared imagery for high-precision agriculture, crop health monitoring, and sustainable resource management. With surface temperature as the key indicator, the company uses evapotranspiration as a fundamental measure of crop water need; critical for irrigation, yield monitoring, and enhancement. Unlike all other satellite-based approaches to crop monitoring, constellr’s data allows farmers to mitigate potential crop losses long before irreversible damage occurs. Their first system will launch into orbit in February 2022.

cloudeo is the world’s leading geospatial market platform offering easy access to high-quality, ready-to-use data from industry leaders worldwide as well as software application services and consulting. cloudeo has also developed Geo-Insurance, an online, fully automated platform focused on delivering insights to insurance companies and farmers for crops. Geo-Insurance helps estimate risk, portfolio exposure, fraud detection, and claim inspection prioritization, all tailored to the client's needs. cloudeo has headquarters in Munich, Germany. cloudeo recently expanded its presence with a new subsidiary (cloudeo Hellas) in Athens, Greece.

cloudeo will leverage its deep experience and heritage in the Earth Observation market to provide easy access to - and publicity for - constellr’s data in the geospatial community, enriching its partner product portfolio with unique high resolution and temperature accuracy data layers. Geoanalytics companies across agriculture, public (governmental), as well as oil & gas and maritime markets are the main targeted customer groups based on their interest in thermal data. Furthermore, cloudeo will utilize its geospatial partner network to widely promote constellr’s data for integration into new and existing geospatial applications.

Dr. Max Gulde, CEO of constellr’s said: “To fight climate change, we need to act now. One of the most vulnerable industries as well as the largest contributors is the agriculture sector. Bringing together the wealth of experience across the complete value chain, this partnership can support agriculture towards enabling a transition to a more secure, and more sustainable global food system.”

The two geospatial companies are not only joining forces to help find novel ways to distribute EO data and upgrade cloudeo’s damage assessment capabilities; their longer-term plan is also to explore the potential for joint product development, with a roadmap of activities already in planning.

Accelerating Through Sand in October

Simon Pacheco Wolf

October was packed with networking, events, and partner meetings (really quite a sociable month...) Here’s a quick tour through the most notable advances:

Events and networking

Collaborations

As we race towards the end of the year, we look back with gratitude that we were able to meet in person with so many of our peers, partners, and suppliers this month.

Until the next one!

~Simon

constellr and Mayday.ai partner to provide an unprecedented common operating picture for risk and disaster management

Simon Pacheco Wolf

Mayday.ai and constellr - two German companies pioneering technological developments in the areas of risk and disaster management and agricultural monitoring, are joining forces. The partnership will allow Mayday users to benefit from a higher spatial resolution.. This higher performance product will be critical for disrupting the highly reactive nature of disaster management and will allow for deeper insights in reducing climate change disaster risks.

In light of the latest COP26 EU €100m pledge and other member state contributions to the Adaptation Fund - the highest single mobilization to the Fund yet - this partnership builds on the acknowledgment that risk-informed strategies and action need to be anchored on the best available climate and disaster risk analytics.

Mayday.ai is a German-based provider of real-time risk and disaster intelligence. Mayday’s platform provides early warning and a common operating picture - that is, the aggregation of multiple disparate data layers into a single ‘source of truth’ - in real-time for all users in the disaster management ecosystem. The service covers multiple disasters, all phases of disaster management, and all geographical regions. The solution runs on real-time earth observation and ancillary data, ranging from social media and news to traffic data and ground-based imaging. This data is distilled through Mayday’s industry-first innovations and its proprietary AI fusion engine, enabling dynamic modeling with high levels of accuracy and granularity

constellr, a space company based in Freiburg, Germany, is pioneering the use of satellite-based thermal infrared imagery for the optimisation of high-precision agriculture, crop health monitoring, yield, and supply chain management. Using land surface temperature as the key indicator, constellr’s monitoring service uses evapotranspiration as a fundamental measure of crop water need; this provides critical input for irrigation and yield monitoring practices. The company has developed a patent-pending microsatellite technology that allows the agricultural supply chain to mitigate potential crop losses based on symptoms of stress long before irreversible damage occurs, unlike current monitoring technology; and to better plan and manage trading and logistics activities.

In disaster management, latency is key. With the availability of high-resolution thermal information in very short time frames comes a vast host of applications waiting to be explored, from a volcano and earthquake monitoring to underwater oil pipeline leak detection and importantly, disaster precursors such as pre-analysis of dry soil which increase the chances of avoiding certain types of disasters altogether. Whilst risk and disaster profiles can be diverse, informed and timely action is key for all stakeholders; those providing a first response, international policy

Higher granularity thermal data from constellr’s constellation will provide an additional, live, measure of risk, allowing Mayday to drive disaster management from reactive and recovery to a more preemptive and preventive approach, helping reduce extremely high associated costs and leveraging greater resilience, particularly in the context of climate change and risk; water stress and conflict, wildfire and urban heat and disease management.

This new alliance fuses constellr’s upstream heritage and downstream data processing capabilities with Mayday’s downstream AI-enabled data fusion competencies. It will allow Mayday to provide an enriched offer for customers: higher spatial resolution and a quicker and more complete operating picture, as well as to further drive its work to shift to what it calls the next generation of disaster management. With their combined technology, the two companies are helping democratize pertinent disaster intelligence where it is most needed, supporting the implementation of the UNDRR’s Sendai Risk Framework and complementing Mayday’s ongoing work to introduce a new dynamic risk score based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Risk Framework globally

“We are delighted with this German partnership. The high spatial resolution imagery provided by ConstelIR will complement our existing EO sources. It will also further enhance our agnostic AI fusion engine's capabilities, as we bring in our real-time disaster and risk intelligence solutions to various partners globally" Kian Mirshahi, CEO and Founder of Mayday.ai

“We are impressed by the analytical performance of the platform such as the sub-pixel detection accuracy of wildfires from geostationary orbit. On the one hand, we immediately saw the benefit of integrating our data to improve existing capabilities. On the other hand, we believe in transferring this approach to other sectors such as agriculture to improve analytical data products for which the current resolution might not be sufficient.” Dr. Max Gulde, CEO and Co-founder of constellr

constellr is hiring YOU!

Simon Pacheco Wolf

We’re looking for exceptional new team members to push the boundaries of thermal monitoring from space and support our growth.

Looking for a job with purpose? constellr’s mission is to provide the foundation for effective and sustainable decision-making across the entire agricultural chain. Our infrared satellites are the first step in providing a new, thermal atlas of our ecosphere.

The following four positions are currently open:

Geospatial Software Engineer

In this position, you will help us design and develop the software tools to help process the data from our upcoming constellation of TIR sensing satellites.

Ground Segment and Operations Engineer

This role presents an exciting opportunity to lead the design and development of systems used for the control of our LEO TIR constellation.

2E2E Payload Performance & Simulation Engineer

For this job, we are looking for a top engineer to lead the development of a highly efficient infrastructure for our TIR payload and system.

Executive Assistant

As Executive Assistant you would support our busy leadership team from A-Z; an exciting development opportunity for an outstanding candidate.

If you are interested in any of these positions please email career@constellr.space with your CV (max 2 pages) plus a 1-page description of the experience and skills you have of relevance to the role; why you are the perfect candidate for the role you want to apply for; and why you're motivated to work at constellr.

Expanding Beyond August and September

Simon Pacheco Wolf

The second half of 2021 has been packed with exciting developments for constellr. Here are some of the most notable from August and September...

New Hires and Active Hiring

Partnerships and Collaborations