Sceye Partners with NASA and USGS for Climate Monitoring

By Akash Sriram

(Reuters) – Aerospace startup Sceye has partnered with NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to deploy climate management tools to monitor wildfires and storms from the edge of space, as exclusively reported by Reuters on Tuesday.

Sceye's High Altitude Platform System (HAPS), powered by solar energy, resembles an airship and can carry a wide array of sensors for Earth observation and disaster response.

This initiative is part of a cooperative research and development agreement signed in 2021 between the three entities, with no financial transactions involved.

As part of the agreement, NASA, USGS, and Sceye will explore sensing capabilities and test the endurance of the hyperspectral imaging system in the stratosphere.

HAPS can hover at altitudes exceeding 60,000 feet, offering a cheaper and more efficient alternative to satellites and small aircraft used for observation.

Satellites require expensive rockets, which are in limited supply, and are not designed for return from space, while small aircraft have operational time constraints. In contrast, Sceye's platform can reach the desired altitude within about half an hour from a launch site.

Mikkel Frandsen, founder of Sceye, stated, "We're about 10 times cheaper than the alternative because the alternative is to use Cessna flights that take off and land and have a human pilot." He mentioned that building a HAPS system costs less than $10 million.

Founded in 2014, Sceye announced a late-stage fundraise in September that valued the startup at $525 million pre-money, providing sufficient liquidity to begin commercial operations next year.

Sceye's platform can carry various payloads without significantly increasing costs, unlike satellites, which incur millions in launch expenses due to extra weight.

Jonathan Stock, Director of the USGS National Innovation Center, emphasized that HAPS has a unique ability to lift multi-mission payloads, allowing for the continuous collection of highly detailed data about environmental events like wildfires, storms, and earthquakes, thus improving accuracy and reliability of forecasts while being "an order of magnitude cheaper."