Kuva Space

A Hyperfield satellite weighs twelve kilograms and sees in up to 160 spectral bands between 475 and 950 nanometres, at 25 metres per pixel across a 50 kilometre swath. The bands are not fixed. The instrument uses a tunable Fabry-Perot interferometer, so the satellite can be told in orbit which parts of the spectrum to record for a given target, which is how a CubeSat gets away with work that usually needs a large spacecraft: it only sends down what was asked for.

The technology descends from VTT, Finland's national research centre, which is both the origin of the interferometer and an investor. Kuva's commercial position is that hyperspectral is not an imagery business but a chemistry one. Optical shows shape and colour, while spectra show composition, which is what makes the data useful for crop nutrition, soils, minerals and gas plumes, and the company sells the analysis rather than the pixels.

Two satellites are in orbit against a stated target of a hundred by 2030. The specification is also more modest than the word hyperspectral suggests: 20 to 30 nanometre bands across the visible and near infrared is closer to a rich multispectral instrument than to what a spectroscopist means by the term, and competitors quote single-digit nanometre resolution. Kuva's answer is a second generation reaching into shortwave infrared at 15 metres, but that satellite weighs 70 kilograms, nearly six times the first, which unwinds much of the economic case for a CubeSat constellation. Tunability carries a cost the company's material does not discuss, since bands are captured in sequence rather than at once, which matters for anything that moves. Most identifiable revenue so far is European public money from ESA, the European Commission and Business Finland, and no commercial customer has been named.