City Sky wins NASA award to develop balloon-borne fireplace sensors

WASHINGTON — City Sky, a startup creating stratospheric balloons to take high-resolution imagery, has gained a multimillion-dollar NASA grant to develop a wildfire monitoring system.

The Denver-based firm introduced June 26 it obtained a contract from NASA’s Earth Science Know-how Workplace for a system that may use stratospheric balloons to detect and monitor wildfires and relay that data to firefighters on the bottom. The three-year award is value about $2.6 million.

The undertaking is an evolution of earlier work City Sky had completed below a NASA Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis award to develop a small thermal infrared sensor, which the corporate examined on its balloons, mentioned Andrew Antonio, chief govt of the corporate, in an interview.

Underneath the brand new award, City Sky and its companions will enhance the geolocation accuracy of the sensor and add the flexibility to downlink pictures it takes, slightly than simply temperature knowledge. A brand new communications system, developed by cellular mesh networking firm goTenna, will permit the sensor to transmit knowledge on to firefighters within the discipline.

The payloads can be designed to each function in detection mode, searching for new wildfires, in addition to what the corporate calls a “perimeter mapping mode” that may monitor the expansion of a hearth as soon as detected.

The system would compete in opposition to a number of satellite-based techniques, each operated by area companies in addition to being developed by corporations, to detect and monitor wildfires. Antonio mentioned City Sky’s system would stand out partially due to its increased decision, since it is going to be flying sensors within the stratosphere slightly than in orbit. He estimated his firm’s sensor will have the ability to present thermal infrared imagery at a decision of three.5 meters.

He added that the balloons may be extra responsive than satellites, rapidly deployed if wanted to watch a selected fireplace slightly than ready for a satellite tv for pc to move overhead. They will additionally present persistence by loitering within the environment. “The place we’ve got the winds, we are able to hover for days,” he mentioned. “We are able to park a balloon over a hearth threat area for a number of days.”

The first buyer for this service could be state and federal authorities companies concerned in wildfire response, he mentioned. There may additionally be supplemental work from personal clients, like insurance coverage corporations searching for to know fireplace threat.

The undertaking workforce for the NASA award consists of City Sky in addition to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Chapman College. Others concerned embrace the College of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Analysis in Environmental Sciences, goTenna and the U.S. Air Pressure Wildland Hearth Department.

City Sky sees this work as a pure outgrowth of earlier enterprise performing high-resolution imaging from its “microballoon” platform. The corporate raised $9.75 million in a Collection A spherical in October 2023 to increase that work, and at present flies a number of balloons per week. “Routine and simple wildfire mapping and administration is actually essential to us,” he mentioned.

Antonio mentioned the corporate has additionally seen curiosity in its microballoon system from the Pentagon. “The Division of Protection is keen on a quickly deployable stratospheric system,” he mentioned. For the DoD, he mentioned City Sky might present your entire system, together with sensors, or simply the ballon itself with the army putting in its personal payloads.

“We began this firm to create this tactical stratospheric functionality,” he mentioned, “and that has confirmed itself out the place we now have a really mature platform.”

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