The Earth Fire Alliance released the first operational wildfire detection images from the FireSat protoflight satellite, validating the system’s ability to detect and characterize active wildfires from orbit. The images demonstrate detection of fires as small as 5×5 meters.
The wildfire imagery was captured over active fire events in the western United States, showing the multispectral infrared instrument’s ability to differentiate actual wildfire from false positives such as industrial heat sources and sunlit surfaces.
The successful demonstration marks a critical milestone toward the full FireSat constellation, which will provide 20-minute global revisit rates for continuous wildfire monitoring when fully deployed with 50+ satellites.
