SatVu

HotSat carries a mid-wave infrared imager at 3.5 metres per pixel, roughly twenty times sharper than the public thermal data from Landsat, and it can shoot video at 25 frames a second. The satellite masses about 130 kilograms on a bus derived from SSTL's Carbonite line, with the instrument supplied by Leonardo, flying sun-synchronous at around 500 kilometres.

Optical imagery tells you what is on a site. Radar tells you the same in darkness and bad weather. Thermal at metre scale tells you whether it is running. A refinery's heat signature reveals throughput, a power station's reveals load, a building's reveals where the insulation failed, which is why SatVu sells to energy traders, insurers and governments rather than to mapmakers. Among the first images from HotSat-2 was reduced activity at the Jamnagar refinery during a disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The instrument has already failed once. HotSat-1 launched in June 2023 and its thermal imaging system died about six months into a five-year design life, taking the company's whole commercial capability with it. HotSat-2 launched in March 2026 carrying the same class of instrument and entered commercial service that June, so the central question here, whether the payload lasts, will not be answered for years. The ten to twenty observations a day in the marketing is a seven-satellite figure, and SatVu operates one. And the number that matters most for a company selling temperature, how small a difference the detector can actually resolve, is not published anywhere.