Spire Global Announces Landmark Space-as-a-Service Contract with NorthStar Earth & Space for a Dedicated Constellation

By: Spire Global, Inc. via Business Wire

March 16, 2022 at 06:46 AM EDT

Collaboration will deliver space-based Space Situational Awareness services to protect critical satellite infrastructure

Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR) (“Spire” or “the Company”), a leading global provider of space-based data, analytics, and space services, announced today a new space-as-a-service agreement with NorthStar Earth & Space (“NorthStar”), a comprehensive Earth & Space Information Services Platform, to build a constellation of satellites focused on space-situational awareness (SSA) and debris monitoring. The first award within the contract is for three satellites, with pre-agreed options for NorthStar to scale the constellation to dozens of satellites as their business operational needs grow.

With this dedicated constellation, NorthStar will be able to monitor space from space, delivering timely and precise orbit determination, collision avoidance, navigation services, and proximity warnings for cyber security to the global satellite community. The mission will encompass the development of Spire’s first 12U satellites as the company continues to expand the power, volume, and edge-computing capacity available to applications deployed on Spire’s space platform.

“This is a landmark contract for the industry, demonstrating the speed, scale, and agility of Spire’s space-as-a-service model,” said Peter Platzer, CEO, Spire. “We are pleased to work with NorthStar on its mission to tackle the growing problem of space debris by deploying next-gen space situation awareness technology. Leveraging Spire’s existing infrastructure and expertise will help NorthStar accelerate the timeline to deploy and scale in space.”

Spire’s proven production and speed-to-commercial-operations track record will help NorthStar’s platform deploy and scale quickly. Once operational, NorthStar will operate the satellites using Spire’s integrated support infrastructure, collecting data to precisely track the orbits of resident space objects, and rapidly predict changes.

“Maintaining pace with the exponential increase in space activity demands immediate action from commercial innovators. Spire provides on-board processing, tasking, flexibility, and agility within an attractive service level agreement business model,” said Stewart Bain, CEO, NorthStar.

Spire and NorthStar each maintain European headquarters in Luxembourg and have a shared mission of sustainability. Reducing the threat of collision requires pinpoint tracking and prediction capabilities. NorthStar, through Spire’s dedicated constellation, will deliver timely and precise Space Traffic Management and Space Domain Awareness services that will elevate traditional SSA to the level of Space Information & Intelligence (Si²). The first three satellites for this dedicated constellation are anticipated to be launched early in 2023.

About Spire Global, Inc.

Spire (NYSE: SPIR) is a leading global provider of space-based data, analytics, and space services, offering access to unique datasets and powerful insights about Earth from the ultimate vantage point so that organizations can make decisions with confidence, accuracy, and speed. Spire uses one of the world’s largest multi-purpose satellite constellations to source hard to acquire, valuable data and enriches it with predictive solutions. Spire then provides this data as a subscription to organizations around the world so they can improve business operations, decrease their environmental footprint, deploy resources for growth and competitive advantage, and mitigate risk. Spire gives commercial and government organizations the competitive advantage they seek to innovate and solve some of the world’s toughest problems with insights from space. Spire has offices in San Francisco, Boulder, Washington DC, Cambridge, Ontario, Glasgow, Oxfordshire, Luxembourg, and Singapore. To learn more, visit http://www.spire.com.

About NorthStar

NorthStar seeks to empower humanity to preserve our planet through a unique Earth and Space information & intelligence platform through dedicated space-based sensors. NorthStar strives to help transform the way governments, industry and institutions assess risk, enforce regulations, and make decisions to foster the sustainable development of our planet and deliver a safe and secure geospatial environment. NorthStar’s services are designed to meet the requirements demanded by a rapidly changing Space and Earth environment.

NorthStar’s investors comprise a global coalition of strategic partners, including Telesystem Space (a co-enterprise of the Sirois family office, Telesystem and the Roger’s Family Trust of Canada), the Space Alliance (Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio) of Europe, the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada. NorthStar Earth & Space (NorthStar) head offices are located in Montréal, Canada and has a US office located in Washington D.C. NorthStar is now launching its European headquarters in Luxembourg.

https://northstar-data.com/