FireSAT: First satellite of a constellation launched, a key step forward in managing global wildfire management

By Steven Hamburg, Senior Vice President, Chief Scientist, and Brian Buma, Senior Climate Scientist, Exploration and Innovation

As climate change fuels bigger, hotter, and more unpredictable wildfires, communities, ecosystems, and economies around the globe are facing increasing risks. There’s no single pathway to managing this growing crisis, but there is something that can empower smarter, faster and data-driven action across the globe: FireSAT.

View of massive fire, The Camp Fire, from space
The Camp Fire — as seen from space — in 2018 became the most destructive fire in California’s history, scorching approximately 240 square miles (622 square kilometers) and killing 88 people. Credit: NASA

What is FireSAT?

FireSAT, owned and operated by Earth Fire Alliance, is a proposed cutting-edge satellite constellation focused on detecting and monitoring wildfires. The launch of the FireSAT prototype satellite marks an important milestone in realizing the FireSAT vision.

By 2030, Earth Fire Alliance and its partners expect to operate over 50 satellites providing near real-time, high-precision data to spot and track wildfires faster and more accurately than ever, giving fire managers critical information to respond swiftly and strategically and scientists a better understanding of fire dynamics across different landscapes and conditions.

These data will help protect communities, nature and the climate, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and break the feedback cycle where a warming climate causes more intense wildfires that emit more greenhouse gases resulting in additional warming.

Significant data gaps limit our ability to understand and track wildfire behavior worldwide. Currently, most regions lack dedicated wildfire detection and monitoring systems. Where tools do exist, they are primarily tower-based sensors or aerial surveillance, which can be obstructed by heavy smoke and extreme winds, leaving those tasked with managing wildfires without the data to be maximally effective.

While satellites already contribute to tracking fire, current technology has a lower spatial resolution and is slower to provide updated data relative to what is needed. The FireSAT mission addresses these limitations with the capability to detect fires as small as five square meters — about the size of a classroom — and when the constellation is complete, there will be an average revisit rate of approximately every 20 minutes.

Active wildfires will have even more frequent updates. FireSAT will provide timely, high-resolution data, that will massively increase our capability to find, monitor and manage fire.

This transformative technology will serve firefighters, researchers and decision-makers, providing the best data to improve wildfire response and management worldwide.

EDF is part of a coalition of organizations involved with FireSAT and is helping to design and implement a support structure that will ensure the scientific integrity of FireSAT data products. We will use the data FireSAT provides to better define wildfire climate impacts and maximize the scientific and management benefits of the information we will now have access to.