Commercialisation is universally recognised as essential for the future prosperity of all aspects of the European space sector, and Earth observation is no exception. The ESA InCubed programme, a co-funding initiative that helps entrepreneurs bring their innovative ideas to market, has enjoyed enormous success since the launch of its first activity in 2018 and continues to make a prodigious contribution to commercial Earth observation. The InCubed portfolio includes around 60 activities, with an impressive €63 million invested so far.
At the upcoming ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Member States will have the possibility to further empower InCubed in its far-reaching efforts to foster commercial innovation. The programme proposal makes the case for a wider remit, including a set of new ‘Invest Actions’ designed to help boost the European Earth observation economy and reinforce relationships with the private investor community.
Three activities launched under co-funding from the ESA InCubed programme respond to customer needs for improved information quality and precise measurement of trends and variations by exploiting Earth observation (EO) assets. Targeted sectors include agri-food, environmental protection, mining and oil and gas.
NEO (NL): SINERGI service
Earth observation data from optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors provides a wealth of information for an ever-increasing number of business applications, but there is often a lack of verification of such data from other sources. Dutch company NEO is developing SINERGI, a novel service that improves reliability by combining EO-derived change detection with crowd-sourced data and publicly available information.
NEO Chief Operating Officer Jan Erik Wien explains: “SINERGI represents a major step forward in the fusion of satellite and non-space data. It uses semantic integration technologies to add validation and additional context to EO-based information services, enabling customers to make informed and data-driven decisions in their operations and helping them to meet their ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] commitments. Typical Big Data pools feeding into SINERGI might include local government records, planning permission documents or even social media posts.”
The intended customer segments for the service vary from governing authorities in areas such as construction, forestry law enforcement and environmental inspection, to private-sector businesses like insurance companies. SINERGI has now completed its main development and is being piloted with customers in the fields of building-related information and invasive plant species in waterways.
ABACO (IT): FIbEO product
Another example of fusing EO and ground-based data is FIbEO, a product conceived by the ABACO group and aimed at the food production industry. “We recognised a gap in the market in terms of information availability for guaranteeing food quality,” says ABACO Project Manager Marco Bonfigli. “For a given crop, agricultural players need to understand current biomass status, have access to intelligent yield estimates and be able to cross-check compliance with specifications. The FIbEO platform will provide such aggregated insight through ML [Machine Learning] algorithms that draw on both satellite imagery and historical data, ultimately helping growers, consortia and control bodies to create trustworthy food supply chains.”
The first target segment for FIbEO is viniculture, with collaboration currently ongoing with growers in Italy’s Chianti region. The first release of the platform will enable wineries not only to predict output but also to identify dead vines in the field in near-real time.
TRE Altamira (IT): BulletInSAR service
Turning once again to the topic of change detection through SAR sensing, Copernicus Sentinel-1 and other radar imaging constellations enable mm-accurate displacements of the Earth’s surface to be measured from space, providing invaluable information to operators in sectors such as mining, energy, civil engineering and civil protection agencies. TRE Altamira already provides customers with remote sensing ground-deformation information on their assets of interest, but the satellite data stream currently requires significant human processing in order to produce actionable end-user reports.
Feedback from TRE Altamira’s clients identified the requirement for faster response times, greater capacity for monitoring multiple assets and supplementary details on measurement reliability. BulletInSAR is the company’s solution, a tool that will deliver timely, scalable deformation reports by adopting an ML-based unsupervised process to cut out the human bottleneck.
Alessandro Ferretti is the company’s CEO: “Innovation and pushing the technology envelope have always been key elements of TRE Altamira’s identity, and BulletInSAR is no exception. As development gets underway, we’re really pitching for a superior user experience, a solution that will deliver fully automated reports using a cloud-hosted interface with tailored results screening. Co-funding from InCubed is of course a powerful enabler for TRE Altamira, helping to propel us forward as we take market-driven SAR ground-displacement reporting to the next level.”
ESA InCubed Officer Piera di Vito continues the theme: “All three of these activities are a perfect fit for InCubed’s DNA: supporting innovative ideas that spot a commercial need for AI-driven, EO-sourced data and insight. We are proud to see and help sustain such a competitive and dynamic ecosystem in the Earth observation domain, and the fact that SINERGI, FIbEO and BulletInSAR are at different stages in their development amply demonstrates the end-to-end nurturing that InCubed provides, from concept through to market readiness.”
During a visit yesterday to ESA’s ESRIN establishment, the Irish National Delegation to ESA took a tour of Φ-lab and discussed the importance of the ESA InCubed programme. The day’s schedule also included the signing of a contract for the InCubed-supported PROTELUM activity.
The Irish Delegation was received yesterday at ESRIN by Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programmes and head of the establishment. The visitors were given a tour of the site’s facilities and participated in a number of sessions covering ESA’s Earth observation (EO) programmes, Ireland’s space policy and technical discussions with the Earth Observation Directorate management team.
The tour featured a visit to Φ-lab, where Division Head Giuseppe Borghi explained the lab’s mission and highlighted some of its flagship programmes. Φ-lab’s focus on transformational innovation in commercial EO was a key theme of the day, with a number of managers from Irish space-sector businesses among the guests. Several of these companies have benefited directly from Φ-lab support with the co-funding of development activities through InCubed.
“Ireland has a strong tradition of entrepreneurship in many sectors and, as our industry representatives showed during the visit to ESRIN, New Space is no exception,” commented Damien English TD, Irish Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail. “We continue to be impressed by the work that Φ-lab and its InCubed programme are doing in nurturing private-sector Research and Development in Earth observation. It is enabling Irish companies to realise their potential by accelerating the commercialisation of their products and services, which is a key deliverable highlighted in Ireland’s National Space Strategy for Enterprise.”
One such InCubed initiative is the PROTELUM activity, which was launched yesterday at a signing ceremony during the visit. Developed by Dublin-based Davra, PROTELUM is a management tool for the ongoing compliance assessment and monitoring of mining sites. The platform will cover the entire mining life cycle and will enable operators and regulators to continually identify safety risks, both underground and at the surface. The solution will apply analytical methods to data from sources such as industrial Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, EO satellites and drones in order to provide actionable insights and predictive modelling.
County Cork’s Treemetrics also attended the event and gave a brief overview of its Satforcert product in one of the technical sessions. Satforcert uses EO-derived data in combination with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to create more efficient and transparent processes for sustainable forest management certification. Currently enjoying its second stint of InCubed co-funding, the product has successfully completed end-user validation and is now being expanded to include features related to forest carbon storage and credits.
Other InCubed-supported companies present during the visit included mBryonics, Skytek, TechWorks Marine and Icon Geo.
Simonetta Cheli added: “It has been a pleasure to welcome the Irish Delegation today in what has been an extremely fruitful exchange of ideas on the current status and future direction of European Earth observation. The contribution from industry partners has been particularly stimulating, with for example Davra and Treemetrics both demonstrating how commercial EO can contribute to sustainable development by providing vital monitoring tools. We are therefore delighted to support the PROTELUM and Satforcert initiatives through the ESA InCubed programme.”
Telespazio has signed a contract with the ESA InCubed programme to develop an innovative service for improving access to Earth observation data. Derived from artificial intelligence (AI) models, I*STAR will allow new user groups to request customised, smart data acquisitions from satellite constellations simply, efficiently and promptly.
The community of Earth observation players is growing and diversifying, as is the number of missions and business models in the sector. Users need a simple solution that recommends intelligent acquisitions of satellite data, while national and international space agencies could benefit from a platform which enables them to promote their missions to those same users. All stakeholders are naturally keen to reduce operational costs.
I*STAR is being developed to address these needs by Telespazio, a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%). The as-a-service solution will provide one-click access for organisations to acquire EO data. Using Deep Learning and Machine Learning algorithms, I*STAR can model user preferences with regard to satellite platforms, sensors, areas of interest and types of products, ensuring that even non-specialist customers can make specific requests from missions without the need for direct support from space operations. Through the automation of data acquisition processes, human intervention is reduced and resources are freed up, giving rise to tangible cost savings.
A further advantage of the service will be the ability to improve response times for disaster relief, allowing authorities and civil protection entities to react more efficiently and effectively.
Marco Brancati is Telespazio’s Head of Innovation and Technical governance: “I*STAR introduces a brand new solution in the Earth observation ground segment – the ability to request products or acquisitions according to user profiles while minimizing the need to know specific mission or to have operational skills. We’re very pleased and encouraged that the ESA InCubed programme has recognised our novel approach and given us the opportunity to bring I*STAR to market.”
“I*STAR is built on the idea that AI is a key enabler for new ways to exploit EO data,” commented Michele Castorina, Head of the Φ-lab Invest Office. “Improving usability and access for an ever-wider user community will help to invigorate commercial EO by providing a marketspace for both downstream and institutional operators.”
The I*STAR activity kicked off in April and is expected to hold its first major development review in October.
With its themes of emerging technologies and the competitive business sector in Earth observation (EO), this year’s Living Planet Symposium (LPS22) championed topics that are fundamental to the mission of ESA Φ-lab. Indeed both the Explore and Invest offices of Φ-lab made major contributions to the event in areas such as Artificial Intelligence for Earth observation (AI4EO), Virtual Reality (VR), New-Space missions and quantum and neuromorphic computing.
“ESA Φ-lab’s defining mantra of transformative innovation in Earth observation, from idea creation through to supporting leading-edge product and service development up to market adoption, has allowed us to play a significant role at the 2022 Living Planet Symposium. Through presentations, discussions and practical demonstrations, our researchers and business innovators have provided a comprehensive view of disruptive activities in EO in both the institutional and commercial sectors.” – Giuseppe Borghi, Head of Φ-lab.
As one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world, ESA’s Living Planet Symposium is a critically important forum for understanding our environment and climate. The 2022 edition was held last week at the World Conference Center in Bonn, and one of its central topics dealt with Enabling the Earth Observation digital transformation using emerging technologies, AI and data analytics to create new opportunities across the entire sector.
ESA Φ-lab was well represented at the event with a very broad range of offerings, including two sessions dedicated to showcasing the wealth of activities covered by the ESA InCubed Programme. In one of the Agora interactive forums, an overview of InCubed was presented within the context of the EO commercial sector as a whole and the forthcoming ESA Ministerial Council (CMIN22). There were also examples of current initiatives and strategic partnerships that Φ-lab is either developing or has put in place to support innovation and investment, such as the recently announced free cloud services from partner OVHcloud. The second session gave a detailed view of several commercial EO satellite missions that are benefitting from InCubed co-funding.
A key area of innovation and cutting-edge research within Φ-lab is the future of computing for EO, and the subject featured in sessions chaired or co-chaired by Φ-lab researchers. In ‘AI@edge and Emerging Computing Paradigms for the Future of Earth Observation’, speakers presented research in a field which offers both significant computational opportunities and some daunting challenges. Andrzej Kucik was one of the session’s conveners: “With talks from both industry and academia, this session revealed the state of the art in deploying AI models at the ultimate edge – space. We also had a demonstration by IniVation of their neuromorphic event camera, which is inspired by biological retinas and has enormous potential for high-resolution, power-efficient sensing.” The discussion on neuromorphic algorithms continued in a subsequent Agora session co-hosted by Gabriele Meoni, where participants made some fascinating contributions on other technologies that are revolutionising information processing, including quantum, distributed and hybrid computing.
Attendees were particularly keen to see Φ-lab’s sensor-derived virtual reality simulations. Located in the ESA exhibition booth, the VR demonstration was run by the Explore Office and based around two research initiatives. In one experience, users explored a virtual 3D model of the Earth through the VR headset and were able to overlay and analyse various EO datasets as they swept across the surface of the planet.
A second headset was on hand displaying the first prototype of a digital twin of ESRIN (the ESA establishment that is home to Φ-lab). “Digital Twin ESRIN is a complete 3D reconstruction of our site, created from drone imagery in combination with in-situ data from vegetation health and air quality sensors,” explained Head of the Explore Office Pierre Philippe Mathieu. “This simulation aims to provide a live twin of a geographical area in order to enable real-time quantification of our environment and its evolution, all delivered within a high-impact VR experience.”
Φ-lab’s presence was also highly evident in a number of other gatherings at LPS22. Division head Giuseppe Borghi discussed transformative innovation at the Digital Copernicus session, promoting its role in generating a unique competitive advantage in the European EO ecosystem. Following on from her team’s UNESCO-award-winning research on dengue fever monitoring, Rochelle Schneider dos Santos was well placed to co-host the ‘Earth Observation for Health’ session, but also facilitated a forum for young scientists called ‘Meet the Next GenEO’. Nicolas Longépé helped organise three sessions on super-resolution methods and SAR data analytics, and many other Φ-researchers shared results and ideas in discussions and on poster boards throughout the week.
The plenaries of LPS22, including ‘Future EO’ and ‘New Space & EO (Commercial Markets)’, are all available for streaming here.
One of the objectives of the Living Planet Symposium, taking place this week in Bonn, is to foster interaction between the institutional and commercial sectors to boost the Earth observation space economy. This is being achieved by highlighting existing partnerships, expanding the number of data users and facilitating access to private funds for companies.
With numerous contributions from industry, investors and ESA’s Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement and Earth Observation Programme directorates, the symposium has brought the business side of observing our planet to the fore. Several sessions featured the ESA InCubed programme, which helps start-ups, mid-cap and large Earth observation players bring their innovative ideas to market through commercial, technical support and investment advice.
ESA’s Living Planet Symposium has opened with a flourish with over 4000 participants including scientists, academics, space industry representatives, institutional stakeholders, data users, students and citizens gathered to discuss the latest findings on our changing planet, as well as advances in satellite technologies, new opportunities in the commercial world, and ESA’s plans for the future.
The symposium – one of the biggest Earth observation conferences in the world – takes place every three years. With the urgency to understand and monitor our planet from space to address the climate crisis and the growing interest in satellite data for all manner of uses that benefit society and the economy, each Living Planet Symposium garners more interest than the last.
Covering satellite automation software, ground-station network access and Copernicus Sentinel-1 image processing, the latest ESA InCubed co-funded activities tap into market needs from across the space economy value chain.
“InCubed supports the entire breadth of the commercial EO arena, from space assets and the ground segment to downstream applications, a fact that is nicely demonstrated by these initiatives with AIKO, Spaceit and KappaZeta. All three companies have identified areas where they can add remarkable value through innovative solutions, and ESA co-funding, technical and commercial de-risking support is helping them achieve a faster time to market – a critical factor for commercial success” – Giuseppe Borghi, Head of ESA Φ-lab.
AIKO: MiRAGE autonomous satellite management
Satellite manufacturers and operators need to optimise their resources and be able to respond rapidly to in-flight events, but the necessity of human intervention often presents bottlenecks and inefficiencies in mission management. To address these issues, Turin-based company AIKO has developed MiRAGE (Mission Replanning through Autonomous Goal gEneration), a Machine Learning-based onboard automation package that renders satellites much less dependent on ground control. MiRAGE analyses in-orbit and operational data to enable the spacecraft to identify and react to unexpected events, thereby lowering operating costs and improving the quality of delivered services.
“MiRAGE empowers satellites to operate autonomously, overcoming the limitations of human-centric mission control,” says AIKO CEO Lorenzo Feruglio. “The software paves the way for benefits such as improved cost efficiencies, increased activity lifespan and boosted resource utilisation. MiRAGE is also highly scalable and will be able to support constellation architectures in which hundreds or even thousands of satellites work collaboratively to reach mission goals.”
The two-year MiRAGE InCubed initiative includes completing product development and acquiring flight hours in order to train and refine the Machine Learning models.
Spaceit: Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services
A further challenge for satellite operators is access to the terrestrial networks that underpin both mission control and data downlinking. Commercial and institutional operators alike need a low-cost, low-latency ground infrastructure at their fingertips, but currently there is a lack of one-point-of-entry communication solutions that are integrated with multiple ground station networks.
Spaceit OÜ, an Estonian start-up founded in 2015, saw a gap in the market for connecting satellite operators with ground stations. Silver Lodi is the company’s CEO and co-founder: “We realised there was a need for a single platform for ground station services, a solution that we were well placed to provide as part of our cloud-based Mission Operations Platform.” The new platform is called Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services, and development under InCubed co-funding started in December 2021. Standalone ground stations, together with virtual and physical networks, will be brought together into one unified ecosystem, allowing users to book services, manage contacts and communicate with satellites in one cross-network environment.
The user interface for Aggregated Marketplace for Ground Station Services, along with the activity to integrate the solution with the ground station segment, are currently being developed, with the Mid-Term Review due in June. In parallel, commercial negotiations with partners and customers are underway, and the product is expected to be ready for launch by the end of this year.
KappaZeta: analysis-ready Sentinel-1 data
The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission gathers frequent Earth observation data (currently every three to six days across Europe), using radar to generate medium-resolution images day and night with no interference from cloud cover. Sentinel-2 by contrast produces high-resolution optical images by day, but the presence of clouds may mean that capturing frequent, useful data at a given location is problematic. Crucially for example, cloud-free vegetation images in Autumn may be available only once a month from Sentinel-2, which is far too sporadic for efficient farm management.
The KappaOne solution seeks to provide the best of both worlds by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) modelling to fuse radar and optical imagery. Simulated Sentinel-2 images will effectively be created based on Sentinel-1 data and organised into data layers such as natural-colour satellite images and biomass estimate.
The solution is being developed by KappaZeta, which like Spaceit is based in Tartu in Estonia. CEO Kaupo Voormansik explains the significance of KappaOne: “Providing Sentinel-1 analysis-ready data for commercial and governmental entities is a landmark activity for KappaZeta. We see that Sentinel-1 imagery is largely underutilised and in its raw format is too complex for the majority of users. KappaOne will make data usage very easy – in fact the name derives from our aim to deliver one-click integration of calibrated, pre-processed information.”
Development of KappaOne kicked off in October 2021 with partial funding from InCubed. The first data layer services are due for release in the next few months.
Czech company SpaceKnow is developing GEMSTONE (the Global Economy Monitoring System delivering Transparency and Online Expertise) under an InCubed co-funding initiative. Based on Machine-Learning-derived data from satellite imagery, the platform will provide users with key insights on industry and supply-chain performance.
Businesses and public institutions often encounter a number of problems in sourcing useful industrial Earth observation data. Not only is it difficult to retrieve information promptly due to the time delay between a phenomenon occurring and related data becoming available, but analysts need to search a wide spectrum of sources to pull together actionable insights. Reliability is also an issue, with concerns that the data received may not be impartial or free from bias.
GEMSTONE seeks to address these obstacles by providing a single point of reference for data, based on indices computed through Machine Learning (ML) analysis of satellite imagery. Users benefit from access to performance information on selected industries and commodity supply chains, drawn directly from unbiased Earth observation data and rapidly processed with state-of-the-art algorithms.
With interactive features allowing customers to tailor the platform to their needs, GEMSTONE is primarily aimed at sectors including banking, insurance, government, automotive and energy. Knowledge can be gained for a specific area or country, or topics of interest can be selected such as lithium or wood production. Customers can also pinpoint sites related to a company or product and then monitor accumulated data at these locations.
GEMSTONE forms an integral part of the wider mission of SpaceKnow. Its Economic Products division is creating what it terms a virtual encyclopaedia of the physical world, fusing satellite imagery data with ML and advanced statistics to create actionable geo-information.
“The things we do at SpaceKnow are supporting key decision making all over the globe, and GEMSTONE will be a premium platform delivering our insights to financial and industry leaders,” commented Jaroslav Javornicky, SpaceKnow’s Co-founder and CEO. “Working with ESA’s InCubed programme gives us access to financing and additional EO expertise that together provide a vital springboard for accelerating our time to market.”
For ESA Technical Officer Piera di Vito, the commercial advantages of GEMSTONE are clear: “GEMSTONE aims to offer a fully scalable product that will bring multiple satellite imagery sources into one place and transform location-specific knowledge into business indices. The platform has the potential to satisfy the demand for a state-of-the-art solution that effectively streamlines outputs without the need for further analysis. As such, GEMSTONE is set to become yet another example of the value of EO in industrial applications, and we’re pleased that InCubed is supporting this activity.”
After kicking off in August 2021, the development of GEMSTONE is progressing well, with data sets and data labelling now complete. The next major review of the initiative is scheduled for the end of April.
Cloud service provider OVHcloud has agreed to make a free cloud service package available to innovative start-ups that collaborate with ESA Φ-lab, the ESA InCubed commercial programme, ESA Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) and ESA Technology Brokers.
ESA Φ-lab, in its continuing effort to bolster start-ups that develop innovative products and services, is keen to provide such companies with a series of free measures to help boost their growth. The first example of this assistance is access to cloud computing services, a vital tool for the development and deployment of New Space applications.
The selected partner for this initiative is OVHcloud, an international provider delivering public and private cloud services in 140 countries. With over 400 000 servers lodged in 33 data centres, the company also offers domain name registration, web hosting plans and telephony. The OVHcloud Start-up Program has been running since 2015 and has so far helped more than 2000 enterprises with resources, training and advice.
In an agreement signed between OVHcloud and the ESA Directorate of Earth Observation in conjunction with the Directorate of Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement, any company granted a contract as part of ESA Φ-lab, ESA InCubed, the ESA Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) or ESA Spark Funding from an ESA Technology Broker, will have access to a number of benefits free of charge. These include up to €100 000 of free credits for OVHcloud products and up to 20 hours of specific technical support from business experts.
ESA will inform its start-up community of the offer, and OVHcloud will promote the various ESA start-up incentives to companies whose products and services may be relevant to the space sector.
“As a leading European cloud provider, we’re very excited to launch this collaboration with ESA as it reflects our common interest in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in the Space Economy,” said Jonathan Bowman Clarke, OVHcloud Start-Up Program Leader for Southern Europe. “With OVHcloud’s offering in combination with co-funding from programmes such as ESA InCubed, start-ups are able to access services that give an essential helping hand to early-stage ventures in the European space arena.”
For Michele Castorina of the Φ-lab Invest Office and InCubed programme, the benefits of the cooperation are clear: “This multi-Directorate agreement is a clear illustration of the coordinated support that ESA provides for economic operators, from incubation in the BICs to product development with Incubed. OVHcloud’s generous offer is a key enabler for start-ups, particularly during the commercialisation phase when setting up business services becomes a necessary part of getting the company off the ground. As such we’re more than happy to promote the OVHcloud Start-up Program to InCubed-supported entrepreneurs.”
Niels Eldering, Head of the ESA BIC and Brokers section at ESA, added: “We have a strong network of 23 ESA BICs and 7 Technology Brokers in over 70 locations in Europe. For our start-ups and innovative businesses, speed and connectivity are essential ingredients for capturing the market successfully, and we look forward to connecting our community to the opportunities that OVHcloud can bring.”
The offer is available to qualifying start-ups from 01 April. Further details can be found here.
