- With two satellites in orbit, constellr offers sub-daily revisit day and night.
- Thermal Earth Observation reveals hidden activity, heat stress, and inefficiencies, even at night.
- SkyBee-2 marks a shift to scalable, secure Constellation-as-a-Service model.
European thermal constellation operator constellr has successfully launched its second thermal infrared satellite, advancing European and international government access to near-real-time thermal intelligence from space.
For users, thermal Earth Observation unlocks a deeper layer of insight beyond the visible. By capturing the world’s temperatures day and night, it reveals hidden stories unfolding across all natural and man-made environments. This includes the detection of nighttime, underground, or below-canopy activity, depictions of material stress, heat inefficiencies and discharge as well as emerging threats or changes across production, infrastructure, or defence systems.
With two satellites in orbit, constellr can now provide daytime metric revisit time of 1.5 days and overnight data acquisitions across key regions, enabling the creation of a continuous, high-performance time series that captures dynamic thermal processes and diverse terrestrial activity at various points of the day. Alongside a commissioned and commercially operational SkyBee-1, this expanded capacity supports mission and service continuity, providing added resilience for government, intelligence, and critical infrastructure users.
Head of European Space Agency’s Ventures and Financing Office, Gianluigi Baldesi said:
“constellr’s SkyBee-2 mission is a prime example of how ESA’s Marketplace can accelerate the success of young companies. By enabling early commercial validation and fostering public-private collaboration, we help cutting-edge European companies like constellr bring transformative capabilities to market faster – supporting Europe’s goals for climate resilience, strategic autonomy, and technological leadership.”
This launch marks a milestone in establishing constellr as the world’s leading thermal data provider, showcasing the company’s scaling capabilities and evolution towards a sovereign grade constellation with reliable tasking capabilities around-the-clock. constellr’s dual-use constellation-as-a-service (CaaS) model, which allows institutional clients to access satellite data and tasking services on demand without owning infrastructure, builds on demonstrable flight heritage, setting the scene for its next generation systems, currently in development.
“With two satellites operational and more on the way, we can now deliver thermal insights at a frequency and reliability that supports decision-making on a level not previously possible. This marks a key step in becoming a trusted partner for governments seeking sovereign-grade intelligence from space,” says constellr’s CEO, Max Gulde.
Equipped with upgraded sensors, and improved payload capacity, SkyBee-2 expands constellr’s capacity to deliver precise thermal insights to customers at 30m native resolution – with sharpened products available at up to 5m – both day and night, via secure tasking, downlink, and cloud infrastructure. constellr’s satellites capture absolute land surface temperature (LST) globally, with the radiometric accuracy and thermal sensitivity needed for subtle anomaly detection and temperature variation measurement across natural and built environments.
