{"id":510063,"date":"2026-01-12T04:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T04:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/510063\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T04:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T04:44:12","slug":"kepler-network-to-link-ororatech-sensors-for-earth-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/510063\/","title":{"rendered":"Kepler network to link OroraTech sensors for Earth monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN \u2014<\/strong> OroraTech has entered a multi-year partnership with Kepler to supply thermal sensors for Kepler\u2019s new optical communications constellation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first four SAFIRE Gen4 sensors under the agreement launched Jan. 11 aboard a Falcon 9, flying as part of the constellation\u2019s initial deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Kepler, we are doing something completely new that will revolutionize the Earth observation market,\u201d Martin Langer, OroraTech\u2019s CEO, told SpaceNews. \u201cIt\u2019s a significant leap from what\u2019s existed before, and no commercial provider has deployed thermal in this way and scale.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Munich-based company deploys its sensors partly on proprietary satellites and partly as hosted payloads<\/a>. It aims to have 100 thermal instruments in low Earth orbit by the end of 2027, forming a laser-linked, always-on network capable of delivering near-real-time thermal imaging of Earth. With the Jan. 11 launch and the decommissioning of its first satellite, Forest-1, the company has a fleet of 15 active instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With this setup, OroraTech can provide time-lapse thermal imagery at hourly intervals for selected target areas, with a daily revisit rate at the global scale. With the addition of the new sensors hosted on Kepler\u2019s satellites \u2014\u00a0 which are a fleet of ten 300-kilogram-class spacecraft equipped with an advanced optical networking system designed to minimize data latency \u2014 the company aims to collect data in orbit and downlink it within minutes.<\/p>\n

Optical satellite links are central to that shift. By routing data through space rather than relying on ground-station passes, a laser-linked network allows thermal imagery to be relayed across the constellation and downlinked as soon as a satellite comes into contact with a ground node.\u201cThis is tremendous for us and wildfires monitoring,\u201d Langer added. \u201cIt moves us closer to treating the data as a live stream rather than a delayed product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in 2018, OroraTech began launching its sensors in 2022 on third party satellites and, in 2025, deployed its first proprietary satellite, Forest-3. \u201cFor us, entering a collaboration with Kepler means moving from isolated missions to persistent coverage,\u201d Langer said.<\/p>\n

For Kepler, the partnership expands the utility of its constellation beyond communications. \u201cThis partnership demonstrates how the industry can break new ground and deliver on the promise of real-time access to data, said Mina Mitry, CEO and cofounder of Kepler. The new sensors, weighing about 5 kilograms each, incorporate an updated algorithm from the Gen3 model and a \u201clive\u201d feature that allows in-orbit tweaking and testing.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 OroraTech has entered a multi-year partnership with Kepler to supply thermal sensors for Kepler\u2019s new optical…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":510064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2147,440,2544,117,109237,128454,159,16988,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-510063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-falcon-9","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-kepler-communications","13":"tag-ororatech","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-sn","16":"tag-space","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115880307670652764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}