{"id":584109,"date":"2023-07-24T15:09:23","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T12:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/this-tech-helps-farmers-protect-their-crops-from-space\/"},"modified":"2023-07-24T15:09:23","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T12:09:23","slug":"this-tech-helps-farmers-protect-their-crops-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/this-tech-helps-farmers-protect-their-crops-from-space\/","title":{"rendered":"#This tech helps farmers protect their crops \u2014 from space"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n For millennia, farmers have monitored the health of their potatoes, pumpkins, or pineapp<\/a>les by walking through the fields and looking at them. As you can imagine, this process is time-consuming and often inaccurate, especially over large areas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

German deep tech startup constellr believes there is a better way. A spin-off from the Fraunhofer, <\/span>Europe\u2019s largest organisation for applied science<\/a>, constellr<\/span> is developing a satellite-based crop monitoring system that acts as a farmer\u2019s eyes in the sky \u2014 and has just raised \u20ac17m in seed funding to scale it up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s tech, which it claims is a world-first, comprises constellations of microsatellites, equipped with thermal infrared and hyperspectral imaging instruments. These gather daily, global land surface temperature data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Constellr sent its first thermal imaging sensors to the International Space Station in 2022 in a trial run. <\/span>Now, armed with fresh funds, constellr looks to deploy the first of its shoe-box-sized thermal imagery satellites in 2024.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The startup won\u2019t need a whole squadron of satellites to get the job done though. According to CEO and co-founder <\/span>Max Gulde<\/span><\/a>, they only need to put four satellites into orbit in order to capture daily imagery of any field on Earth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Once deployed, the satellites\u2019 sensors will capture data that is used to compile <\/span>heatmaps that display plant stress and water availability at a sub-field level. This makes it far more accurate than sentinel-3, the European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA) prim<\/span>ary Earth observation satellite<\/span>.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\"constellr-satellite-crop-monitoring-startup\"
<\/a>Comparison between constellr\u2019s heatmaps (right) and those taken by the ESA\u2019s Sentinel-3 satellite. Credit: constellr<\/figcaption>