Greece deploys satellites to fight wildfires

Four thermal imaging satelites will beryllium used to track wildfires and different utmost vigor phenomena compounded by clime change.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base successful California earlier this year. These satellites person been designed to observe and show wildfires successful near-real time, providing details astir the fires’ progress, detecting immoderate remaining progressive spots and documenting the damage.

These satellites, and others that marque up Greece’s outer fleet are portion of the National Microsatellite Program that support the postulation and absorption of outer information and person spot Greece connected the vanguard of utilizing outer systems to combat wildfires.

The satellites were designed, and their operating system developed, by a consortium led by Munich-based OroraTech, referred to connected its ιστότοπος arsenic “the planetary person successful space-based thermal intelligence” which won a competitory bid.

“OroraTech was awarded a €20 cardinal improvement declaration successful 2024 to physique and motorboat Greece’s archetypal nationalist wildfire monitoring system. The system includes 4 dedicated thermal imaging satellites and a robust information processing and alerting infrastructure. As portion of that mission, OroraTech committed to section hiring, workforce training, and the constitution of a imperishable operational beingness successful Athens,” the institution said successful April 2025.

The thermal imaging satellites use infrared technology “to observe adjacent small fires earlier they developed into large occurrence fronts” according to Professor Konstantinos Karkantzalos, Secretary General of Telecommunications and Posts astatine the Ministry of Digital Governance.

“Data crunching and occurrence detection take spot connected the satellite, to guarantee contiguous reporting to the (firefighting) operational center. At the aforesaid time, maps are produced predicting however the occurrence will make based connected the focal point, the laic of the land, the type of vegetation, humidity and different weather data,” helium added.

Ioannis Lantouris, managing manager of OroraTech Greece adds that the satellites scan each of Greece’s territory, taking temperatures successful bid to observe thermal anomalies. “This scanning is virtually done pixel by pixel,” helium says. 

Some times, the thermal spike is simply a mendacious positive, caused, for example, by solar panels reflecting sunlight, mill chimney fires and buildings with tin expanse roofs that rise temperatures. But “the models we use tin separate (between those cases) and a existent fire,” Lantouris assures.

For the clip being, it takes astir fractional an hr for the accusation to beryllium sent to the Civil Protection datas platform, processes with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence and effect successful sounding the alarm. The extremity is to bounds this hold to 5 minutes successful the coming years, Lantouris says.

Satellite information assistance threefold: the timely detection of occurrence outbreaks, iun operation with drones and different visual data; operational response, with a real-time, dynamic mapping of the occurrence fronts and predictive capabilities arsenic to their development; and post-fire estimation of damages to support compensation, reforesting and different measures, said Karkantzalos.

Greece is the lone European state that has invested successful a nationalist thermal imnaging outer system and has acceptable it successful orbit.

The infrared thermal cameras installed successful these low-orbit satellites tin besides beryllium used connected different issues affecting the environment, agriculture and water resource. “We tin use thermal and optical information to observe harvest stress (and) the level of water tables,” helium says, besides utilizing different satellites not specifically built to observe fires. They tin besides assistance observe floods and rockfalls.