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Australian remote sensing startup Esper It wants to capture hyperspectral images from space at a fraction of the price of its competitors.
The company, which will launch its first test satellite today on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 mission, is entering a field filled with competition. There’s a reason for that: Hyperspectral is an incredibly powerful type of remote sensing technology that uses a spectrometer to determine the spectral signature of objects. This allows users to detect the chemical fingerprint of many different substances, including metals, chemicals, gases, and plants.
Armed with just $1 million in seed funding and assistance from the Australian government for his first mission, Esper aims to conquer Better-capitalized peers with less expensive technology.
The goal of this first mission, called “Over the Rainbow,” is to validate the company’s core technology on a demonstration spacecraft: a spectrometer system and special software that “reads” the spectral images. Esper keeps costs low by using many off-the-shelf components and consumer-level electronics, rather than more expensive optics systems; The software ensures data accuracy.
“We are a very smart sensor. This is what really separates us from all the other spectrometers and hyperspectral devices that are being put out there,” said Shoaib Iqbal, CEO and co-founder of Esper. “We are really low-cost equipment because we use a lot of components.” Available off-the-shelf, consumer-level electronics, then we design them to be space-ready. There’s a lot of software that’s already in place to make sure it works this way. Otherwise, we’re capturing spectral nonsense and you can’t really understand much of that.
Esper was founded in early 2021 by Iqbal and Joy Lorenzak, who met when they sat next to each other in a chemistry class at Monash University in Melbourne. The two have participated in a number of hackathons together. They ended up winning Unihack, a student hackathon in Melbourne, in 2019 for a different space-focused idea, but turned to Earth observation after experiencing a particularly devastating bushfire season that same year.
“The whole of southeastern Australia was burning,” Iqbal said. “We were saying, ‘We’re already in space technology, so why don’t we move to focus on Earth observation to prevent a lot of these disasters in the future.’ That’s how we stumbled across hyperspectrum.
The two began attracting potential clients from the mining industry and from companies involved in disaster response. This early response prompted the founders to “go all in” on hyperspectrum, he said.
The company has joined the spring 2023 cohort of the Techstars space accelerator; Through this program, they met people at major US government agencies interested in purchasing hyperspectral imagery, such as the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. (The NRO has already done so Begin issuing study contracts For private sector hyperspectrum providers, including startups.)
Along the way, the team was also able to secure $1 million in funding from investors including Stellar Ventures, Day One Ventures and Dolby Family Ventures, as well as secured grants from Alexis Ohanian’s 776 Foundation and the Australian Federal Government.
Esper plans to launch a second satellite with similar hardware later this spring with India’s ISRO. The startup aims to start launching commercial payloads by late next year or early 2026, and to have 18 satellites in orbit, providing a daily visit rate, by 2028.
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