British thermal satellite firm doubles its fleet in orbit

British company SatVu has launched HotSat-3, a satellite that maps heat on the ground from orbit, giving it a second working spacecraft and the ability to photograph any spot on Earth in thermal infrared once every 24 hours, day or night.

The satellite lifted off on Oct. 1 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, the London-based company said on Oct. 2. HotSat-3 will now go through commissioning in orbit before it starts commercial work. SatVu did not say how long that will take.

HotSat-3 is SatVu’s third satellite, but only its second operational one. It will work alongside HotSat-2, which launched in March on SpaceX’s Transporter-16 mission and began delivering imagery in June. The company’s first spacecraft, HotSat-1, failed six months after its June 2023 launch.

The satellites carry mid-wave infrared cameras, which detect heat given off by objects instead of reflected sunlight. That lets them work at night and pick out things a normal camera cannot, such as running engines, generators, gas flares, ship wakes and warm cooling water flowing out of power plants. SatVu says its images resolve detail down to 3.5 m (11.5 feet).

For military and intelligence analysts, that means a single image can show whether a vehicle, ship, factory or piece of equipment is running or sitting idle. Repeated images of the same site can show how busy it is and how that changes over days and weeks.

SatVu pitches the data at defense and intelligence users monitoring strategic sites and critical infrastructure, especially at night or in places where reports from the ground are scarce or slow. It also sells to commodity traders and energy analysts, who use heat signatures at refineries and liquefied natural gas plants to spot shutdowns, restarts and changes in output.

“With two operational satellites, we will have double the capacity: customers can collect twice as much imagery, monitor twice as many sites, or return to the same site more often,” said Anthony Baker, CEO and co-founder of SatVu.

HotSat-1, built by Surrey Satellite Technology, returned its first images in October 2023, including wildfires in Canada and urban heat in Las Vegas, before an anomaly halted operations that December. Baker later linked the failure to a likely power circuit problem in the camera. SatVu received a £10 million insurance payout and ordered HotSat-2 and HotSat-3 from the same builder in 2024.

In February, SatVu closed a £30 million ($40 million) funding round that included the NATO Innovation Fund, bringing its total equity funding to £60 million. The company has also received a Defence Innovation Loan from the UK Ministry of Defence through its innovation arm, which Minister of State Luke Pollard said helped attract the private investment.

SatVu says launches for HotSat-4 and HotSat-5 are already booked, and it has contracts covering long-lead parts for HotSat-6. The company has said it plans a constellation of about 10 satellites that could offer up to 20 revisits a day.

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