Hydrosat to build sovereign thermal satellites in Europe for NATO

Luxembourg-based satellite company Hydrosat is developing a high-resolution heat-sensing satellite capability called Nyktòs that governments can task to photograph specific targets day or night, the company announced on Nov. 2, aiming the service at NATO members and other allies that want their own space-based intelligence. Nyktòs will use mid-wave infrared sensors, which detect heat rather than visible light. Hydrosat said it will build the capability in Europe, opening additional facilities and expanding its network of European suppliers. The company did not say where the new facilities will be, how many satellites Nyktòs will include, what image resolution they will offer, when the first will launch or what the program will cost. It has not named any customers. Thermal imaging lets a satellite see warm objects against cooler surroundings, including at night and through some smoke and haze. Mid-wave infrared is especially sensitive to hotter sources such as engines, exhausts, fires and industrial equipment, which makes it useful for finding vehicles, aircraft or activity at a site. Hydrosat said Nyktòs is meant for tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, the military term for watching and gathering information on a specific area or target. "Europe's investment in space is an investment in its ability to protect its interests and make independent decisions. We are committed to helping turn that ambition into capability," said Pieter Fossel, co-founder and chief executive officer of Hydrosat. Hydrosat plans to pair Nyktòs with Osiris, a separate constellation it announced in September. Osiris will use long-wave infrared sensors to scan wide strips of the Earth up to 340 km (211 miles) across at 25-meter resolution, with the first two satellites due to launch in 2027. The company describes the two systems as a "tipping and cueing" pair: Osiris would spot unusual heat changes across a large region, and Nyktòs would then be pointed at those locations for a closer look. "Broad-area thermal monitoring provides the context to identify changes, while high-resolution MWIR allows us to investigate those changes more closely," said Scott Soenen, Hydrosat's chief technology officer. The company already operates two thermal imaging satellites, VanZyl-1 and VanZyl-2, which it says have collected more than 500 million square kilometers of imagery. Their long-wave thermal sensors have a resolution of about 70 meters, coarse enough that a single pixel covers an area larger than a football field. Fossel told space industry outlet Payload in September that defense customers have used the VanZyl imagery for intelligence campaigns, including watching activity at night. Hydrosat said governments that buy a dedicated Nyktòs mission could set their own rules for tasking the satellites, controlling them, securing them and handling the data, and could add capacity from the company's commercial satellites when needed. Besides military use, the company listed emergency response and checking critical infrastructure such as power and industrial sites as possible applications. Several European governments have been increasing spending on national satellite surveillance that they control themselves. Finland and Poland, for example, have taken over operation of their own radar imaging satellites in the past two years.