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Australian space startup Esper wants to build hyperspectral satellites cheaply

TechBrunchBy TechBrunchMarch 4, 20243 Mins Read
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Australian remote sensing startup Esper wants to capture hyperspectral images from space at a fraction of the price of its competitors.

The company is entering a highly competitive field today with the launch of its first demonstration satellite on SpaceX's Transporter-10 mission. There's a reason for that. Hyperspectral is a very powerful type of remote sensing technology that uses a spectrometer to identify the spectral features of an object. This allows users to detect chemical fingerprints of a variety of substances, including minerals, chemicals, gases, and plants.

Armed with just $1 million in pre-seed funding in its first mission and support from the Australian government, Esper aims to beat its better-capitalized peers with lower-cost technology.

The goal of this first mission, dubbed “Over the Rainbow,” is to test the company's core technology, a spectrometer system and proprietary software that “reads” spectral images, on a demonstration spacecraft. Esper keeps costs low by using many off-the-shelf components and consumer-grade electronics rather than expensive optical systems. The software ensures that the data is accurate.

“We are truly a smart sensor. That's what really separates us from all the other spectrometers and hyperspectral hardware out there,” said Shoaib Iqbal, CEO and co-founder of Esper. I am. “We use off-the-shelf consumer-level electronics in many of our components and design it to be space-ready, so it's a very low-cost device. We want to make sure it works that way. There's a lot of software that really works for that. Otherwise, we're capturing a spectrum of nonsense and we don't really understand it.”

Esper was founded in early 2021 by Iqbal and Joey Lorenczak, who met while sitting next to each other in a chemistry class at Monash University in Melbourne. The two participated in many hackathons together. They ultimately won the Melbourne student hackathon, Unihack, in 2019 with another space-focused idea, but pivoted to Earth observation after surviving a particularly devastating bushfire season that year. I moved my feet.

“The whole of south-east Australia was on fire,” Iqbal said. “We thought, since we already work in space technology, why not focus on Earth observation to prevent many of these future disasters? That’s how I discovered Spectrum.”

Both companies began attracting attention from potential customers from both mining and disaster response companies. This early response led the founders to go “all in” on hyperspectrum, he said.

The company joins Techstars' Spring 2023 group of space accelerators. Through that program, they met with people from key U.S. government agencies interested in purchasing hyperspectral imagery, including the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. (The NRO has already begun issuing research contracts with private hyperspectrum providers, including startups.)

Along the way, the team also completed $1 million in funding from investors including Stellar Ventures, Day One Ventures, and Dolby Family Ventures, and secured grants from Alexis Ohanian's 776 Foundation and the Australian Federal Government. Did.

Later this spring, Esper plans to work with India's ISRO to launch a second demonstration satellite equipped with the same hardware. The startup aims to begin launching commercial payloads by late next year or early 2026, and to have 18 satellites in orbit by 2028, providing daily revisit rates.



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