ICEYE Constellation
SAR
EO
The ICEYE constellation is a constellation of X-band SAR Satellites. The ICEYE satellites provide high-resolution images the Earth’s surface to enable better decision making based on the Earth observation data.
Quick facts
Overview
Mission type | EO |
Launch date | 3 December 2018 |
End of life date | 31 December 2023 |
Instruments | SAR |
CEOS EO Handbook | See ICEYE Constellation summary |

Summary
Mission Capabilities
Each satellite of the ICEYE constellation carries an X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), allowing the instruments to “see” through darkness, clouds and rain to observe Earth at all times. ICEYE uses the X-band frequency of 9.75 GHz at a wavelength of around 3 cm, and has a pulse rate frequency of 2-10 kHz.
ICEYE’s ability to persistently monitor locations is critical in order to detect high-frequency change and respond to real events that require a lot of decision-making; examples of this include natural disasters such as floods, vessel monitoring, and oil spill monitoring. ICEYE data is used in a variety of industries, including insurance, financial, energy, utilities, mining, civil, maritime and security.
Performance Specifications
ICEYE images in 4 distinct imaging modes:
- Spot imaging mode,
- Spot extended area (SLEA) imaging mode,
- Strip imaging mode,
- Scan imaging mode.
Spot mode offers the finest resolution available with a ground resolution of 1.0 m x 1.0m, and it is able to image a scene of size 5km x 5km at incidence angles of 20-35°. SLEA mode provides the largest very-high resolution SAR imagery with ground resolution of 1.0m x 1.0m and a scene size of 15 km x 15 km, or slant resolution of 0.5m x 1.0 m at incidence angles of 20-35°. Strip mode enables imaging of any area on Earth with spatial resolution of 3 m and scene size of 30 km x 50 km; it has a ground resolution of 3.0m x 3.0 m, and slant resolution of 0.5-2.5 m x 3.0 m at incidence angles of 15-30°. Scan imagining mode is a wide area imaging mode able to create a scene size of 100km x 100 km, with a ground resolution of 15m x 15 m at incidence angles of 21-29°.
Each satellite in the ICEYE constellation has a ground track repeat time of 17 day, with 21 satellites currently in orbit, this allows ICEYE to have daily coherent ground track repeat. When all 48 satellites are in orbit, this will enable twice daily revisit time over locations on Earth.
The ICEYE satellites are in sun-synchronous orbit at an inclination of 97.7° with an orbital frequency around 96 minutes.
Space and Hardware Components
Each ICEYE spacecraft has a mass of 85 kg, with X-band sensors utilising active phase array antennas that are electronically steerable, allowing the satellites the ability to look both left and right, with a range bandwidth between 40-300 MHz. The ICEYE satellites are able to downlink data to the ground for processing at 140 Mbit/s in the X-band range. ICEYE provides Level 1, 1a and 1b data products, that is, they can either be complex images which have both amplitude and phase values, or amplitude images which have amplitude-only pixels.
ICEYE Constellation of SAR X-band microsatellitesSpacecraft and sensor complement Launches Mission Status References
The commercial Earth Observation (EO) company ICEYE Ltd. of Espoo, Finland developed and built the ICEYE-X2 spacecraft with a SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) instrument suitable for a microsatellite. ICEYE-X2 features a range of technology improvements to increase the versatility and quality of the imaging data compared to ICEYE-X1. The improvements relate to items such as component choices, subsystem interfaces, software code, operations procedures, communication links, and optimization of power management. ICEYE-X2 possesses various imaging modes to provide imagery at high resolution and alternatively with a very wide swath to support different types of use cases. 1) 2)

Spacecraft and Sensor Complement
The ICEYE constellation will consist of approximately 18 operational X-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) small satellites. This new service puts an emphasis on superior reliability, a vastly higher rate of revisits to individual locations, and on objectivity. The service is based on a completely new satellite and sensor design, leveraging recent technological advancements and a New Space approach.
ICEYE SAR satellites, each with a mass of 85 kg, are side-looking X-band SAR sensors utilizing active phased array antenna (electronically steerable) technology. It is both right- and left-looking and capable of acquiring satellite imagery of Earth using stripmap, spotlight and ScanSAR imaging modes. ICEYE-X2, a typical representative instrument of the ICEYE constellation (Figure 1), is currently located on a sun-synchronous polar orbit with 17 days of ground track repeat cycle with 15 imaging orbits per day. Table 1 lists system and orbital parameters of presently available SAR instruments.
Parameter | ICEYE Constellation Specifications |
Carrier frequency | 9.65 GHz (X-band) |
Look side | Both left and right |
Antenna size | 3.2 m x 0.4 m |
PRF (Pulse Repetition Frequency) | 2-10 kHz |
Range bandwidth | 40-300 MHz |
RF peak power | 4 kW |
Polarization | VV |
Incidence angle range in Stripmap mode | 10-30º |
Incidence angle range in Spotlight mode | 20-35º |
Imaging Modes
ICEYE satellites collect SAR images in several standard imaging modes. ICEYE’s satellites are capable of imaging in Stripmap, Spotlight and ScanSAR modes, with Stripmap and Spotlight imagery operationally available for acquisition worldwide. Notably, all imaging beam modes are available in both right- and left-looking configuration.
Stripmap Imaging Mode
In Stripmap mode, the ground swath is illuminated with a continuous sequence of pulses while the antenna beam is fixed in elevation and azimuth. This results in an image strip with a continuous image quality in the flight direction.

Spotlight Imaging Mode
In Spotlight mode, mechanical antenna steering in the azimuth direction is used to increase the illumination time, resulting in an increased synthetic aperture and, therefore, better azimuth resolution compared to a continuous stripmap mode.

ScanSAR Imaging Mode
In ScanSAR mode, electronic antenna elevation steering is used to switch after bursts of pulses between swathes with different incidence angles. Due to the switching between the beams, only bursts of SAR echoes are received, resulting in a reduced azimuth bandwidth and hence, reduced azimuth resolution.
To obtain a more homogeneous radiometry and noise floor over the access range, each ICEYE ScanSAR beam will have an individual transmitted chirp range bandwidth which decreases with increasing incidence angle. The bandwidth is selected to achieve a targeted constant ground range resolution in the complex single look data. For detected products, multi-looking will be applied independently to each beam before merging into a combined swath.
ScanSAR is currently under development.

Parameter | Stripmap | Spotlight | ScanSAR (under development) |
Nominal swath width | 30 km | 5 km | - |
Nominal product length | 50 km | 5 km | - |
Look angles | 10-30º | 25-30º | - |
NESZ (Noise Equivalent Sigma Zero) | <-17 dB | <-17 dB | - |
AASR & RASR | <-17 dB | <-17 dB | - |
Number of elevation beams | 3 | - | - |
SLC, slant range resolution | 0.5 m (300 MHz), 1.5 m (100 MHz) | 0.6 (300 MHz) | - |
SLC, azimuth resolution | 2.5-3.0 m | 1 m | - |
SLC, range spacing | 0.4-1.7 m | 0.4 m | - |
SLC, azimuth spacing | 1.4-1.7 m | 0.35-0.7 m | - |
GRD, ground range resolution | 3.0 m | 1 m | - |
GRD, azimuth resolution | 2.5-3.0 m | 1 m | - |
Polarization | VV | VV | - |
Definitions: AASR (Azimuth Ambiguity to Signal Ratio); RASR (Range Ambiguity to Signal Ratio); SLC (Single Look Complex); GRD (Ground Range Detected).
Launches
ICEYE-X2 Launch
The two ICEYE-X2 microsatellites were launched on the SSO-A rideshare mission of Spaceflight, on 3 December 2018 (18:34:05 GMT) on a SpaceX Falcon-9 Block 5 vehicle from VAFB (Vandenberg Air Force Base) in California. 3) 4) 5)

Orbit: Sun-synchronous circular orbit with an altitude of 570 km, inclination of 97.7º, LTDN (Local Time of Descending Node) of 10:30 hours, repeat cycle of 17 days.

Payloads on the Spaceflight SSO-A Rideshare Mission
The layout of the list follows the alphabetical order of missions as presented on the Wikipedia page ”2018 in spaceflight” and with the help of Gunter Krebs's short descriptions.
This mission enabled 34 organizations from 17 different countries to place spacecraft on orbit. It’s also special because it was completely dedicated to smallsats. Spaceflight launched 15 microsatellite and 49 CubeSats from government and commercial entities including universities, startups, and even a middle school. The payloads vary from technology demonstrations and imaging satellites to educational research endeavors.
• AISTechSat-2, a 6U CubeSat for Earth observation of AISTech (Access to Intelligent Space Technologies), Barcelona, Spain.
• Al Farabi-2, a 3U CubeSat technology demonstration mission of the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan.
• Astrocast-0.1, a 3U CubeSat technology demonstration mission of Astrocast, Switzerland, dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT)
• Audacy-0, a 3U CubeSat technology demonstration mission of Audacy, Mountain View, CA, built by Clyde Space.
• BlackSky-2, a microsatellite (55 kg) of BlackSky Global (Seattle, WA) which will provide 1 m resolution imagery with improved geolocation accuracy.
• BRIO, a 3U CubeSat of SpaceQuest Ltd. of Fairfax, VA to test a novel communications protocol that uses SDR (Software Defined Radio).
• Capella-1, a microsatellite (37 kg) of Capella Space, San Francisco, CA featuring a X-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture) payload.
• Centauri-1, a 3U CubeSat of Fleet Space Technologies, Adelaide, South Australia. Demonstration of IoT technologies.
• CSIM-FD (Compact Spectral Irradiance Monitor-Flight Demonstration), a 6U CubeSat of LASP (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics) at the University of Boulder, CO, USA. The goal is to measure solar spectral irradiance to understand how solar variability impacts the Earth’s climate and to validate climate model sensitivity to spectrally varying solar forcing.
• Eaglet-1, the first 3U CubeSat (5 kg) of OHB Italia SpA for Earth Observation.
• Elysium Star-2, a 1U CubeSat of Elysium Space providing space burial services.
• ESEO (European Student Earth Orbiter) sponsored by ESA, a microsatellite of ~40 kg with 6 instruments aboard.
• Eu:CROPIS (Euglena and Combined Regenerative Organic-Food Production in Space), a minisatellite (230 kg) of DLR, Germany. The objective is to study food production in space in support of future long-duration manned space missions (life sciences). The main payloads are two greenhouses, each maintained as a pressurized closed loop system, simulating the environmental conditions of the Moon or of Mars.
• eXCITe (eXperiment for Cellular Integration Technology), a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) mission to demonstrate the 'satlets' technology. Satlets are a new low-cost, modular satellite architecture that can scale almost infinitely. Satlets are small modules that incorporate multiple essential satellite functions and share data, power and thermal management capabilities. Satlets physically aggregate in different combinations that would provide capabilities to accomplish diverse missions.Built by NovaWurks, eXCITE has a mass of 155 kg. eXCITE also carries the See Me (Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements), a prototype microsatellite (~22 kg) built by Raytheon for DARPA to obtain on-demand satellite imagery in a timely and persistent manner for pre-mission planning.
• ExseedSat-1, a 1U CubeSat mission by the Indian company Exseed Space. The goal is to provide a multifunction UHF/VHF NBFM (Narrow Band Frequency Modulation) amateur communication satellite.
• FalconSat-6, a minisatellite (181 kg) of the USAFA (U.S. Air Force Academy) and sponsored by AFRL. FalconSat-6 hosts a suite of five payloads to address key AFSPC (Air Force Space Command) needs: SSA (Space Situational Awareness) and the need to mature pervasive technologies such as propulsion, solar arrays, and low power communications.
• Flock-3, three 3U CubeSats (5 kg each) of Planet Labs to provide Earth observation.
• Fox-1C, a radio amateur and technology research 1U CubeSat developed by AMSAT and hosting several university developed payloads.
• HawkEye, a formation-flying cluster of three microsatellites (13.4 kg each) of HawkEye 360, Herndon, VA, USA. The goal is to demonstrate high-precision RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) geolocation technology monitoring.
• Hiber-1 and-2, these are 6U CubeSats, a pathfinder mission of Hiber Global, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, for Hiber Global's planned (IoT) communications CubeSat constellation.
• ICE-Cap (Integrated Communications Extension Capability), a 3U CubeSat of the US Navy. The objectives are to demonstrate a cross-link from LEO (Low Earth Orbit) to MUOS (Mobile User Objective System) WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) in GEO (Geosynchronous Orbit). The objective is to send to users on secure networks.
• ICEYE-X2, two X-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) microsatellites (each ~ 80 kg) of Iceye Ltd, a commercial satellite startup company of Espoo, Finland.
• Irvine 02, a 1U CubeSat educational mission by the Irvine Public School Foundation, Irvine, CA. The Irvine CubeSat STEM Program (ICSP) is a multi-year endeavor that directly impacts over a hundred students from six high schools and two school districts.
• ITASAT-1 (Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica Satellite), a Brazilian 6U Cubesat (~8kg) built by the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA). A former rescoped microsatellite mission.
• JY1-Sat, a 1U CubeSat of Jordan developed by students of various universities. The satellite will carry a UHF/VHF amateur radio.
• KazSTSAT (Kazakh Science and Technology Satellite), a microsatellite (<100 kg) of Ghalam LLP, Astana, Kazakhstan. Developed by SSTL on a SSTL-50 platform including an SSTL EarthMapper payload designed for global commercial wide-area imaging with a resolution of 17.5 m on a swath of 250 km.
• KNACKSAT (KMUTNB Academic Challenge of Knowledge SATellite) of Thailand, a 1U technology demonstration CubeSat, the first entirely Thai-built satellite, developed by students of King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB). Use of an amateur radio for communication.
• Landmapper-BC (Corvus BC 4), a 6U CubeSat (11 kg) of Astro Digital (formerly Aquila Space), Santa Clara, CA, USA. The satellite features a broad coverage multispectral (Red, Green, NIR) imaging system with a resolution of 22 m.
• MinXSS-2 (Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer-2), a 3U CubeSat(4 kg) of LASP (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics) at the University of Colorado at Boulder,CO, USA. The objective is to study the energy distribution of solar flare SXR (Soft X-ray) emissions and its impact on the Earth’s ITM (Ionosphere, Thermosphere, and Mesosphere) layers.MinXSS-2 is a copy of the MinXSS-1 but with some improvements. — MinXSS-1 was launched on 06 December 2015 onboard of Cygnus CRS-4 to the ISS, were it was deployed into orbit on 16 May 2016. It reentered Earth's atmosphere on 6 May 2017.
• NEXTSat-1, a multi-purpose microsatellite (~100 kg) of Korea designed and developed at SaTReC (Satellite Technology Research Center) of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). The goal is to conduct scientific missions such as star formation and space storm measurements and also technology demonstration in space. Instruments: ISSS (Instrument for the Study of Space Storms) developed at KAIST to detect plasma densities and particle fluxes of 10 MeV energy range near the Earth. NISS (NIR Imaging Spectrometer for Star formation history), developed at KASI (Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute).
• Orbital Reflector, a 3U CubeSat project (4 kg) of the Nevada Museum of Art and artist Trevor Paylon. The Orbital Reflector is a 30 m sculpture constructed of a lightweight material similar to Mylar. On deployment, the sculpture self-inflates like a balloon. Sunlight reflects onto the sculpture making it visible from Earth with the naked eye — like a slowly moving artificial star as bright as a star in the Big Dipper.
• ORS-7 (Operationally Responsive Space 7), two 6U CubeSats (-7A and -7B), named Kodiak and Yukon, in support of the USCG (US Coast Guard) as part of the Polar Scout mission and in cooperation with DHS (Department of Homeland Security), the ORS (Operationally Responsive Space Office) of DoD, and NOAA. The objective is to detect transmissions from EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons), which are carried on board vessels to broadcast their position if in distress.
• PW-Sat 2 (Politechnika Warszawska Satellite 2), a 2U CubeSat of the Institute of Radioelectronics at the Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland. The objective is to demonstrate a deorbitation system - a drag parachute opened behind the satellite - which allows faster removal of satellites from their orbit after it completes its mission.
• RAAF-M1 (Royal Australian Air Force-M1), an Australian 3U CubeSat (~4 kg) designed and built by UNSW (University of New South Wales) for the Australian Defence Force Academy, Royal Australian Air Force. RAAF-M1 is a technology demonstration featuring an AIS receiver, and ADS-B receiver, an SDR (Software Defined Radio).
• RANGE-A and -B (Ranging And Nanosatellite Guidance Experiment), two 1.5 CubeSats of Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology), Atlanta, GA, USA, flying in a leader-follower formation with the goal of improving the relative and absolute positioning capabilities of nanosatellites.
• ROSE-1, a 6U CubeSat of Phase Four Inc., El Segundo, CA, USA. ROSE-1 is an experimental spacecraft designed to provide an orbital test-bed for the Phase Four RFT (Radio Frequency Thruster), the first plasma propulsion system to fly on a nanosatellite.
• SeaHawk-1, a 3U CubeSats of UNCW (University of North Carolina, Wilmington), NC. The goal is to measure the ocean color in project SOCON (Sustained Ocean Observation from Nanosatellites). SeaHawk is considered a prototype for a larger constellation. The SOCON project is a collaboration between Clyde Space Ltd (spacecraft bus), the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Cloudland Instruments, and NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center).
• See Me (Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements), a prototype microsatellite (~22 kg) built by Raytheon for DARPA to obtain on-demand satellite imagery in a timely and persistent manner for pre-mission planning.
• SkySat-14 and -15. Planet Labs of San Francisco has 13 SkySats in orbit. The commercial EO satellites were built by Terra Bella of Mountain View, CA, which Planet Labs acquired from Google last year. At the time of the purchase, there were 7 SkySats in orbit. On 31 October 2017, Planet launched an additional six on a Minotaur-C rocket. The 100 kg SkySats are capable of sub-meter resolution – making them the most powerful in the constellation. Customers can request to have these high-resolution satellites target their locations of interest.
• SNUGLITE, a 2U CubeSat designed by the SNU (Seoul National University) for technology demonstrations and amateur radio communication.
• SpaceBEE, four picosatellites of Swarm Technologies (a US start-up), built to the 0.25U form factor to make up a 1U CubeSat.
• STPSat-5 is a science technology minisatellite of the US DoD STP (Space Test Program), managed by the SMC of the USAF. STPSat-5 will carry a total of five technological or scientific payloads to LEO (Low Earth Orbit) in order to further the DoD’s understanding of the space environment. The satellite was built by SNC (Sierra Nevada Corporation) on the modular SN-50 bus with a payload capacity of 50-100 kg and compatible with ESPA-class secondary launch adaptors.
• THEA, a 3U CubeSat built by SpaceQuest, Ltd. of Fairfax, VA to demonstrate a spectrum survey payload developed by Aurora Insight, Washington DC. The objective is to qualify Aurora’s payload, consisting of a proprietary spectrometer and components, and demonstrate the generation of relevant measurements of the spectral environment (UHF, VHF, S-band). The results of the experiment will inform future development of advanced instrumentation by Aurora and component development by SpaceQuest.
• VESTA is a 3U CubeSat developed at SSTL in Guildford, UK. VESTA is a technology demonstration mission that will test a new two-way VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) payload for the exactEarth advanced maritime satellite constellation. Honeywell Aerospace is providing the payload. VESTA is a flagship project of the National Space Technology Program, funded by the UK Space Agency and managed by the Center for EO Instrumentation and Space Technology (CEOI-ST).
• VisionCube-1, a 2U CubeSat designed by the Korea Aerospace University (KAU) to perform research on Transient Luminous Events in the upper atmosphere. The image processing payload consists of a multi-anode photon multiplier tube(MaPMT), a camera, and a real-time image processing engine built by using SoC (System-on-Chip) FPGA technologies.
Spaceflight has contracted with 64 spacecraft from 34 different organizations for the mission to a Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit. It includes 15 microsatellites and 49 CubeSats from both commercial and government entities, of which more than 25 are from international organizations from 17 countries, including United States, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Finland, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Germany, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Poland, Canada, Brazil, and India. 6)
ICEYE-X3 Launch
The ICEYE-X3 mission was launched on 5 May 2019 as demonstration payload of York Space System's (Denver, CO) S-class satellite bus. Harbinger was launched on an Electron KS mission of Rocket Lab on the STP-27RD mission from New Zealand's Māhia Peninsula, sponsored by the U.S Army. The payloads on this mission included the ICEYE-X3, BridgeSat's optical communications payload and Enpulsion of Austria's Field Emission Electric Propulsion system.
ICEYE-X4 and ICEYE-X5 Launch
The ICEYE-X4 and ICEYE-X5 satellites of ICEYE were launched as secondary payloads on a Soyuz-2-1b Fregat M rocket on 5 July 2019 (05:41 UTC) from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia. The primary mission on this flight was the Meteor-M 2-2 satellite (2750 kg), a new generation meteorological mission of Russia, developed by VNIIEM and operated by Roskosmos. 7) 8)
Orbit: Sun-synchronous orbit, altitude = 832 km, inclination = 98.6º.
Secondary Payloads
• ICEYE-X4 and ICEYE-X4 SAR microsatellites of ICEYE Oy, Finland.
• Lemur-2 x 8 of Spire Global Inc., USA (8 3 U CubeSats)
• NSLSat-1, a 6U CubeSat of Clyde Space UK and NSLComm, Israel, Antenna deployment experiment, Ka-band communications experiment
• JAISAT-1, A Ham radio CubeSat, German Orbital Systems GmbH / Thai ham radio society
• EXOConnect, an experimental CubeSat of German Orbital Systems GmbH
• D-Star one, two experimental 3U CubeSats of German Orbital Systems GmbH
• Lucky-7, an experimental 1U CubeSat of SkyFox Labs, Czech Republic
• SEAM-2.0, a 3U CubeSat for Earth magnetic measurements of the Royal Technology Institute, Sweden
• MTCube (Robusta-1C), a 1U CubeSat for space radiation monitoring, Montpellier University, France
• SONATE, an experimental 3U CubeSat of the University of Würzburg, Germany
• BEESAT-9 to -13, five 1U CubeSats for orbital navigation and UHF intersatellite communications, Technical University of Berlin
• Move-2b, a 1U experimental CubeSat of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany
• TTU-100, a 1U CubeSat for X-band and optical communications, Technical University of Tallinn, Estonia
• Ecuador -UTE, a 3U CubeSat for space weather and ionospheric research, Ecuador Technical University, Ecuador
• DoT-1, a (Demonstration of Technology) microsatellite (18 kg) of SSTL, UK
• MKA Sokrat, a CubeSat for space weather monitoring, Skobeltsin NIIYaF MGU, Russia
• VDNKhA-80, a CubeSat for space weather monitoring, Skobeltsin NIIYaF MGU, Russia
• AmurSat (AmGU-1), a CubeSat for space weather monitoring, Amur State University, AmGU, Russia.
• CarboNIX, Technology demonstration payload to test a new “shock-free” payload deployment mechanism, Exolaunch, Berlin
ICEYE-X6 and ICEYE-X7 Launch
The ICEYE-X6 and ICEYE-X7 microsatellites of ICEYE were launched as a secondary payloads on 28 September 2020 (11:20 UTC) on a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rideshare mission of Roskosmos from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome Site43/4 in Russia. The primary payload on this flight were three Gonets-M (No 27-29) civilian communication microsatellites with a total mass of ~840 kg. 9)

Orbit of primary payload: Gonets satellites are usually delivered into a 1,400 km orbit with an inclination 82.5º.
Orbit of secondary payloads: Sun-synchronous orbit, altitude of ~575-600 km and an inclination close to 97º.
Secondary Payloads
A total of 19 small satellites were part of this rideshare mission, 15 CubeSats of which were managed and integrated by the services of Exolaunch of Berlin, Germany. Exolaunch uses ExoPods for the deployment of the CubeSats. 10) Exolaunch is a rideshare launch and deployment solution provider for small satellites. Its flight heritage includes the successful deployment of nearly 100 small satellites into orbit, in cooperation with launch vehicle providers worldwide. 11) Additionally, four small Russian satellites were also booked for the same mission. 12)

• ICEYE-X6 and ICEYE-X7, two microsatellites of ICEYE, Finland.
• Kepler Communications. Two 6U CubeSats, built by UTIAS/SFL of Toronto, Canada. Both satellites are equipped with high-capacity Ku-band communications systems and Kepler’s internet-of-things (IoT) payload prototype. They will provide additional capacity for Kepler’s Global Data Service.
• LacunaSat-3, a 6U CubeSat (~10 kg), of Lacuna Space to provide IoT services. Spacecraft developer: NanoAvionis Corp. of Lithuania.
• Lemur-2, Four 3U CubeSats of Spire Global Inc., San Francisco, CA (provision of Earth observation). Two of the Spire nanosatellites have an onboard supercomputer and intelligent machine-learning algorithms that can provide hyper-accurate predictions of the locations of boats, track their whereabouts and calculate their arrival times at ports, allowing port businesses and authorities to manage busy docks safely. Two further Spire satellites launched alongside them, both of which will be used to forge inter-satellite links. These connections allow satellites to act as relays, sending data to one another and down to ground stations, which cuts the time between data collection and its delivery. - Made by Spire Global UK, the nanosatellites, which are some of the smartest satellites ever built in the UK, are backed by over £10 million of investment from the UK Space Agency. 13)
• MeznSat, a 3U CubeSat of Khalifa University / AURAK, UAE (United Arab Emirates), provision of Earth observation.
• NetSat, Four 3U CubeSats of ZfT (Zentrum für Telematik e.V.), Würzburg, Germany. Demonstration of self-organization of several satellites in three-dimensional space within the framework of a formation in orbit.
• SalSat (Spectrum AnaLysis Satellite), a 8U CubeSat (12 kg) of TUB (Technical University of Berlin). The objective is to analyze the global spectrum use of S-band and VHF, UHF amateur radio bands. This analysis is required due to the increasing number of users and the intensification of radio communication, which is leading to an escalating probability of interference between radio signals. It will analyze the global spectrum usage with SALSA, a spectrum analyzer payload based on a SDR (Software Defined Radio).
• Decartes, a satellite with an unkown mass of NIIYaF MGU, Russia.
• Norby, a 6U CubeSat of NGU (Novosibirsk State University), Russia.
• Yarilo, two 1.5 CubeSats of BMSTU (Bauman Moscow State Technical University) and the Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia, developed for studying the solar activity within the X-ray range.
• January 25, 2021:
ICEYE-X8, - X9 and -X10 Launch
ICEYE announced today the successful launch of three ICEYE SAR satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 smallsat rideshare mission via EXOLAUNCH. This raises the total number of launched ICEYE missions to 10, including commercial and dedicated customer missions. Early operation procedures with all 3 spacecraft have been successfully finalized, and each satellite’s SAR instrument is currently going through commissioning. 14)

- After commissioning these 3 new spacecraft, ICEYE operates the world’s largest, most agile SAR satellite constellation, providing global commercial access and persistent monitoring. ICEYE’s constellation is able to provide the world’s most reliable and frequent images of customers’ areas of interest, regardless of time of day, or weather conditions.
- “The successful launch of three ICEYE SAR satellites is an excellent start to 2021 and reinforces ICEYE’s unmatched capabilities in persistent monitoring. This is the beginning of a significant ramp up of spacecraft builds from our expanded facilities in Europe and a new manufacturing site in the U.S.,” said Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE US. “The new U.S. site will be used to build and operate dedicated spacecraft providing ICEYE flexibility in supporting U.S. and global customers.”
- ICEYE empowers commercial and government partners with persistent monitoring of any location on Earth. The company helps customers make informed, data-driven decisions to address time-critical challenges in various industries and uses such as border security, flood monitoring and oil spill clean-up.
- “As ICEYE continues to expand its constellation of SAR satellites, it provides the opportunity to image more locations each day,” said Eric Jensen, President of ICEYE US. “Our customers receive dependable and frequent imaging that provides persistent monitoring of locations addressing time-critical needs. This reinforces ICEYE’s market-leading position in providing change detection applications.”
- The company raised $87 million in the Series C funding round last year, bringing its total fundraising to $152 million. At least another 8 ICEYE satellites are being manufactured for launch still within this year. Equipped with cloud-piercing radar sensors, the company’s satellites can image day or night and in all weather conditions at incredibly high resolutions.
• July 1, 2021: ICEYE announced today the successful launch of four ICEYE SAR satellites. They were launched into orbit on a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 smallsat rideshare mission via Exolaunch. Three satellites of the latest technology generation will be added to the ICEYE constellation after a commissioning phase. The fourth satellite of this launch will be operated as a demonstration mission for the company’s next-generation spacecraft. With this launch, ICEYE has successfully brought 14 satellites into orbit, including both commercial and dedicated customer missions. 15)
- With the launch of multiple satellites, ICEYE continues to grow and operate the world’s largest constellation of agile SAR satellites with the purpose of further developing and optimizing persistent monitoring capabilities. ICEYE’s constellation is designed to reliably provide imagery of customers’ areas of interest with a very short revisit time to enable the detection and tracking of rapid changes on the Earth’s surface, regardless of time of day, or weather conditions.
- “ICEYE provides the world’s leading persistent monitoring services based on data collected from orbit,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE . “If you need to know what is happening in the world, ICEYE is your choice for persistent monitoring.”
- The launched next-generation demonstration mission is equipped with the newest SAR satellite technology from ICEYE, allowing new and innovative capabilities in SAR imaging. These improvements include a factor two improvement in ground resolution, and the capability to simultaneously image and downlink data for near-immediate data delivery.
- “The growth of ICEYE’s radar imaging satellite constellation is unprecedented, and as a result, our customers enjoy the most actionable set of capabilities in the world for persistent monitoring,” said Steve Young, Vice President of Business Development and Sales at ICEYE . “Not only the quantity, but also the consistent push for what’s possible with the latest technology keeps ICEYE at the forefront of radar satellite imaging.”
- ICEYE serves SAR data to a global customer base in three imaging modes: Spot, Strip, and Scan, each with optimized resolution and coverage, all the way to 10,000 km2 with individual acquisitions. ICEYE is set to announce further radar satellite data capabilities in July, with additional launches set for later in the year.

• The fifteenth and sixteenth SAR satellites of ICEYE were launched on 13 January 2022 (at 15:25 UTC) on the Transporter-3 dedicated rideshare mission of SpaceX on a Falcon 9 Block 5 vehicle from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. On board this launch were 105 commercial and government spacecraft, including CubeSats, microsats, PocketQubes, and orbital transfer vehicles. 16) 17)
Orbit: Sun-synchronous Orbit with an altitude of 525 km and an inclination of ~98º.
ICEYE has successfully launched two new SAR satellites into orbit. The launch included the first satellite built, licensed and operated by ICEYE US. Both satellites were launched on the SpaceX Transporter-3 smallsat rideshare mission with Exolaunch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Communication has successfully been established with each spacecraft. In total, ICEYE has now deployed 16 satellites since 2018, including both commercial and dedicated customer missions. 18)
ICEYE’s constellation is designed to provide customers with reliable and frequent imagery enabling the rapid detection and tracking of changes on the Earth’s surface, regardless of time of day, or weather conditions. This capability is ideally suited for applications such as insurance, natural catastrophe response and recovery, national security, defense, humanitarian relief and climate change monitoring.
“Expanding our fleet is an important step in better serving our global customers and empowering our advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence relating to SAR technologies,” says Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “The new satellites add critical capability to the ICEYE constellation which translates to additional solutions and deeper analytics for our customers.”
“The ICEYE US team continues its rapid progress,” says Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE US. “The launch of our first U.S. built and licensed satellite is a key milestone as we grow our U.S. operations and customer base.”
ICEYE US is a subsidiary of ICEYE with its headquarters located in Irvine, California. The newly launched ICEYE US satellite is licensed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and will be operated and controlled exclusively from the company’s 24/7 Mission Operations Center (MOC) in Irvine.
• On 25 May 2022 at 18:35 UTC (2:35 p.m. EDT), ICEYE launched five new SAR satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 smallsat rideshare Transporter-5 mission via ExoLaunch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Communication has successfully been established with each spacecraft. ICEYE and ICEYE US have now deployed 21 satellites since 2018, including both commercial and dedicated customer missions. 19)
- The launch also included the second and third satellites built, licensed and operated by ICEYE US. ICEYE US, a subsidiary of ICEYE, established a satellite manufacturing facility early last year at its headquarters in Irvine, California. The newly launched ICEYE US satellites are licensed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and will be operated and controlled exclusively from the company’s 24/7 Mission Operations Center in Irvine.
- “Expanding our fleet of U.S. built satellites is a critical step that expands our capability to support our customers across the U.S. Government,” says Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE US. “We are seeing a shift in the U.S. and international government sector that is now looking to fully leverage and integrate commercial remote sensing technologies into their collection architectures.”
- Two of the satellites launched are provided directly to the Brazilian Air Force. The Air Force will operate the satellites in support of environmental and national security objectives. Due to Brazil’s cloudy weather, SAR satellites that can image the earth during the night or through clouds have an important advantage in gathering actionable insights.
- Later this year, ICEYE plans on adding up to five additional satellites to its constellation including more satellites manufactured by ICEYE US.
Orbit: Sun-synchronous Orbit with an altitude of 525 km and an inclination of ~97.5º.

Mission & Development Status of the ICEYE-X Satellite Constellation
• July 14, 2022: ICEYE, a world-leading provider of natural catastrophe data, announced today its participation in a risk transfer project with the Ghana Ministry of Finance, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Insurance Development Forum (IDF). 20)

- With project leadership from two IDF members – Allianz and Swiss Re – in collaboration with UNDP, the project will enhance the capabilities of the government to respond to and better support those impacted by urban flooding. In addition, the project is expected to boost the country’s socioeconomic resilience by de-risking development investments in the Greater Accra Region.
- At the scheme’s core is a parametric flood insurance solution. ICEYE will provide high-resolution hazard data in the event of a flood. Combining SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imagery with data from other sources, ICEYE will verify both the extent and depth of floods. The comprehensive and accurate nature of the ICEYE solution reduces basis risk, ensuring that payouts are both timely and in line with expectations. Importantly, the flood data will also help inform response and recovery decisions throughout the region.
- “At UNDP Ghana, we are committed to supporting integrated development solutions that build resilience across society to protect Ghana’s development progress,” said Angela Lusigi, UNDP Country Representative. “This project to develop an innovative insurance solution for managing flood risks and to provide rapid payouts as a safety net for poor and vulnerable urban communities is welcome. It will serve as a boost to government and private sector efforts to provide wider access to insurance and risk finance. By blending the financial-solution expertise developed by the government, with the long-term development and governance support offered by UNDP in partnership with the private sector, we will be able to advance Ghana’s ambitious development agenda.”
- "This alternative risk transfer scheme will be the first of its kind in the region and shows the desire of all parties involved to innovate in order to break barriers, bring down basis risk, and improve disaster recovery outcomes. That includes the demand from the government to try something new, the innovation of all partners to construct this programme, and the power of ICEYE data to enable it,” says Lukas Sundermann, Senior Product Manager for Public Sector Solutions at Swiss Re, speaking on behalf of the IDF project team.
- “We are extremely proud to be part of a project to help ensure the safety and financial security of those most exposed to floods in Ghana,” says Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “By rapidly combining data from our satellite constellation with auxiliary information, we can inform decision making with an entirely new level of accuracy, consistency and resolution that has never been possible before. ICEYE’s data will be central to the success of this important project for the insurance sector and the global development community.”
• June 29, 2022: ICEYE, a world-leading provider of SAR data and natural catastrophe analysis solutions, announced today the launch of ICEYE Insights, a powerful geospatial platform which allows global insurance companies to combine ICEYE’s unique flood observation data and analysis with their property insurance information to understand the impact of a flood event and take action. 21)

- Utilising the EigenPrism® catastrophe risk management tool, the ICEYE Insights platform is automatically updated with data and analysis from ICEYE’s Flood Insights product in near real-time following a flood event. The data includes high-resolution reporting of flood extent and measurement of depth required to assess the impact on individual buildings. Insurers can seamlessly upload details of their property portfolio via an API, and instantly visualise and analyse a flood event's impact on their personal and commercial insurance customers.
- The capabilities provided by ICEYE Insights enable insurers to achieve rapid, proactive communication with customers, optimise the allocation of field resources, enhance triage of claims, identify opportunities to make provisional payments or early total loss settlement, estimate the cost damage to individual properties and their portfolio overall, and optimise their reserves.
- “ICEYE Insights provides a new way of interacting with the unique and powerful flood hazard data delivered by ICEYE,” said Stephen Lathrope, Global Head of Insurance at ICEYE. “Insurers and MGAs can choose either to receive our flood data directly into their existing geospatial analysis tools or if they prefer, they now have the option of subscribing to access this information via the ICEYE Insights platform. There is no more convenient, cost-effective, powerful means by which insurers can take immediate action in response to flooding, or to analyse the impact of flooding retrospectively in order to enhance their underwriting.”
- ICEYE delivers unmatched persistent monitoring capabilities for any location on earth. Owning the world’s largest synthetic-aperture radar constellation, the company enables objective, data-driven decisions for its customers in sectors such as insurance, natural catastrophe response and recovery, security, maritime monitoring and finance. ICEYE’s data can be collected day or night, and even through cloud cover.
• May 25, 2022: Arturo, the proptech company that delivers intelligent analytics from individual property to portfolio, and ICEYE a world-leading SAR data provider and expert in natural catastrophe solutions, announced today a partnership that will change what’s possible with insurance response to flood events. ICEYE’s near real-time flood imagery that provides flood depth, extent and duration data will combine with Arturo’s portfolio and property characteristics data to give insurers the ability to estimate and triage flood damage immediately following a flood event. 22)

- ICEYE owns the world's largest SAR satellite constellation and combines the data from its spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources on the ground to quickly produce a precise representation of a flood’s extent and depth anywhere in the world. When this intelligence is added to Arturo’s AI-enabled property analytics, insurers can now determine the extent of property damage in near real-time. This mission-critical information can help evaluate the ongoing risk, estimate claims payouts across portfolios and mobilize accordingly to support policyholders.
- “When a flood rushes in, an insurer’s response can make or break a policyholder’s experience and the insurer’s bottom line, so fast and accurate claims management is critical,” said Neil Pearson, Chief Strategy Officer of Arturo. “This collaboration enables insurers to see down to the property level what type of flood damage a home will have, and get the policyholder the financial assistance they need to quickly repair their home.”
- The Arturo - ICEYE combined solution was battle-tested during a March 2022 flood event in Australia and showed the predicted flood damages were accurate with claims activity in the area, a proof point Pearson believes is significant for future flood events.
- “The ability for insurers to rely on this solution to predict flood damage and immediately process claims will go a long way for customer loyalty,” said Pearson.
- “By providing increasingly rapid access to near real-time hazard data, the entire insurance value chain can benefit, even down to the individual customer experience,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “We are very pleased to be adding Arturo as one of our ICEYE Solutions Partners as we jointly aim to improve decision making and facilitate speedier responses to floods for the entire insurance sector.”
- ICEYE and Arturo’s collaboration will initially cover flood depth insights for the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia. Arturo and ICEYE invite select insurers who are interested in learning more about the partnership to visit booth A9 at the Insurtech Insights Americas event in New York City on May 25 and 26.
• May 23, 2022: ICEYE today announced the start of a pilot activity with the European Space Agency (ESA) to support the Copernicus Emergency Management Services (CEMS) team with flood insights. Through the pilot, ICEYE will deliver critical flood impact information showing the extent and depth of flooding at the structure level to ESA and CEMS throughout 2022. The pilot will allow CEMS to evaluate ICEYE's flood insights and explore potential applications. 23)

- ICEYE owns the world's largest synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation and combines the data from its spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources on the ground as well as hydrological datasets. The output is a precise representation of the peak of flooding extent and depth. ICEYE expects that the pilot can help CEMS foster improved understanding of the impacts of flooding in developed areas, in near real-time.
- The pilot will focus on go-forward flood monitoring services and insights delivery following flood events, and will also provide ESA and CEMS access to select data for historical events through ICEYE’s analytic archive. This pilot marks the company’s third and largest pilot with ESA. Previous pilots involved volcanic eruption monitoring and sea-ice mapping.
- “We are leaning into the important capabilities of our European commercial space partners and we view ICEYE as an important part of our transformational future at ESA,” says Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes. “We are proud to build upon our existing work with ICEYE within the Copernicus programme and we look forward to continuing to work with them.”
- “This pilot is a huge step toward establishing ICEYE as a key element in the evolution of CEMS Rapid Mapping & Risk/Recovery components, and we are now thrilled to build on our existing partnership with ESA to highlight our flood solutions,” says Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “ICEYE’s aim is to help users make informed, data-driven decisions to address time-critical challenges, especially in the sectors of insurance and natural catastrophe response and recovery which is an important focus area to accelerate our company’s growth.”
- In October 2021, ICEYE became a Copernicus Contributing mission partner to the European Union’s Earth Observation programme. As part of the collaboration, Copernicus users began receiving access to ICEYE’s SAR imagery related to public safety, border control, security and maritime domain awareness.
- The Copernicus Contributing Mission Activity, as part of the Copernicus Programme, is managed by the European Space Agency on-behalf of the European Commission. These entities are the primary users while other users, such as public authorities in Europe, can also benefit from the data.
• May 9, 2022: ICEYE has entered a strategic collaboration with Neptune Flood, the first AI-driven flood insurance company to provide fast, easy, and superior flood insurance. 24)

- “At Neptune we have long been following the work done by ICEYE to drive the satellite imagery industry forward,” said Neptune CEO, Trevor Burgess. “We believe the ability to monitor our client’s properties in real-time for indications of flooding activity provides our stakeholders with unparalleled assurance and benefits. We are also excited to explore the possibility of broader coverage options for our clients made possible through the synchronization of ICEYE’s data with our Jumpstart parametric technology.”
- “ICEYE is committed to supporting the ongoing advancement of flood insurance solutions,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO & Co-Founder of ICEYE. “Through our collaboration with Neptune, the largest and most technology enabled flood insurance company in the United States, we will be able to provide near real-time clarity around not only the extent of a flood event, but also the level of flood impact at the individual building level. We believe this hazard insight not only enhances loss sizing and claims response capabilities, but also helps further accelerate flood insurance innovation.”
- Owning the world's largest SAR satellite constellation, ICEYE provides access to an entirely new level of persistent monitoring for any location on earth: uninterrupted visibility, day and night, in any weather conditions, that is transforming the insurance industry. By combining data from its spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources, ICEYE delivers in near real-time easily ingestible hazard and damage data to the entire insurance value chain.
- Triton, Neptune’s patent pending artificial intelligence engine, processes tens of thousands of insurance quotes daily utilizing machine learning to influence risk selection, pricing and disaggregation. Quotes are available in seconds through both a vast network of geographically distributed agencies and directly to consumers through the www.neptuneflood.com website.
- Neptune Flood is the largest entirely digital flood insurance company in the United States and is the alternative to the NFIP. Operating in 48 states plus D.C., Neptune uses AI-driven technology to make it fast and easy for consumers to buy, and agents to sell insurance. Neptune also now offers parametric earthquake insurance through its Jumpstart brand.
• April 20, 2022: ICEYE, a world-leading SAR data provider and expert in environmental flood hazard data, and EigenRisk®, a leading and independent insurance technology platform provider, have today announced a new agreement to incorporate ICEYE's unique flood insights for large-scale flood events into the EigenPrism® catastrophe risk management platform. 25)
- EigenPrism provides a single, cloud-based platform for catastrophe data, analytics, modeling and reporting. Spanning all major perils, the system is designed to support enhanced planning, monitoring and response capabilities for global catastrophes.
- ICEYE owns and operates the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation. By combining high-resolution satellite imagery with auxiliary information sources, the company generates unique flood observation data anywhere in the world in near real-time, including accurate flood extent footprints and detailed flood depth measurements at the individual building level.
- “With the impact of global climate change, flood exposures now pose more significant threats than ever to businesses, communities and government entities in all areas of the world, and difficult challenges for commercial and residential insurers, and reinsurance companies,” said Deepak Badoni, president, EigenRisk. “Our relationship with ICEYE provides access to valuable data to quickly evaluate inland or coastal flood footprints anywhere in the world, which can help facilitate timely event response and loss sizing exercises.”
- "We're pleased to work with EigenRisk as one of our ICEYE Solutions Partners and to offer our market-leading flood insights to the risk management and insurance community through their EigenPrism platform," said Rafal Modrzewski, chief executive officer and co-founder, ICEYE. “Our satellite-based flood monitoring tools deliver precise assessments in near real-time regardless of weather conditions, which make them critical resources for effective flood risk management and disaster response.”
• March 15, 2022: ICEYE, a world-leading SAR data provider and expert in NatCat solutions, and Fermat Capital Management, LLC, (Fermat), one of the largest investment managers in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector, have today announced a strategic collaboration in which ICEYE will provide Fermat with near real-time flood hazard data and support R&D into other natural perils. 26)
- Under the agreement, ICEYE will provide Fermat with high-resolution flood data for large-scale events. This will include information on flood extent and flood depth at the building level. ICEYE’s ability to provide granular hazard and damage data through the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation and various auxiliary sources will also support the exploration of new potential use cases, including wildfire-related events.
- “ICEYE has established a proposition that is unique in the market. Its SAR satellite constellation and AI capabilities generate critical natural catastrophe intelligence in near real-time,” said John Seo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Fermat. “We are excited about the potential of this new relationship. It enables us to provide our investor clients with additional insights. Just as importantly, it creates significant opportunities to broaden the private re/insurance and ILS market’s role in enhancing resilience to climate shocks.”
- “Our alliance with Fermat, a pioneer of insurance-linked securities, marks our entrance into this highly dynamic and expanding marketplace,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “Fermat has been at the center of the ILS sector since its inception, and through our collaboration, we aim to facilitate the continued evolution of this market by enabling a deeper understanding of natural catastrophes.”
- “By providing ILS fund managers and investors with high-resolution insights, ICEYE is enabling a stepchange in how the capital markets approach high-gradient perils such as flood,” said Andy Read, Global Head of Government Solutions at ICEYE. “Alternative capital plays an important role in maintaining the resilience and stability of the re/insurance market in the face of natural disasters and therefore, ultimately, of communities themselves. Understanding the impact of flooding in near-real time is essential to the ongoing evolution of this sector and for developing solutions that will help communities better manage and respond to floods and other climate shocks.”
- Owning the world's largest SAR satellite constellation, ICEYE provides access to an entirely new level of persistent monitoring for any location on earth: uninterrupted visibility, day and night, in any weather conditions, that is transforming the insurance industry. By combining data from its spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources, ICEYE delivers in near real-time easily ingestible hazard and damage data to the entire insurance value chain.
• March 8, 2022: ICEYE has been named to Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2022. ICEYE was ranked number two in the Most Innovative Company Europe, Middle East, and Africa category. 27)
- Fast Company’s list honors businesses that are making the biggest impact on their industries and culture as a whole - ultimately thriving in today’s ever-changing world. These companies are creating the future today with some of the most inspiring accomplishments of the 21st century. In addition to the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies, 528 organizations are recognized across 52 categories.
- “We are incredibly honored to be named to Fast Company’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “Over the past several years, our ICEYE team has worked diligently to build a solid reputation by delivering concrete results to our customers with unmatched timelines and quality of service. It’s incredible for their innovations to be recognized on such a prestigious stage.”
• February 8, 2022: ICEYE today announced that Tokio Marine Holdings (Tokio Marine) has made a strategic investment in the company as it looks to develop new insurance products and services that utilize satellite data. The announcement is part of ICEYE’s Series D funding round which was led by Seraphim Space and raised a total of $136 M. 28)
- As part of the new alliance between the two companies, ICEYE and Tokio Marine will collaborate on a series of initiatives designed to facilitate the digital transformation of insurance claims capabilities and develop new insurance products and services to address the increasing frequency and severity of natural catastrophes and the growing impact of climate change.
- By applying the high-precision imaging capabilities of ICEYE’s satellite constellation and its unique Daily Coherent Ground Track Repeat technology, and working with its dedicated insurance team, the two companies will focus on three key initiatives:
a) To develop advanced insurance claims services for wind-related damage, using satellite images and auxiliary data to estimate the presence and extent of roof damage in the aftermath of a windstorm event.
b) To develop processes that will accelerate insurance claims payments across all companies within the Tokio Marine Group and support the development of parametric insurance products.
c) To develop more effective ways of detecting potential disasters through satellite data and supporting response efforts by monitoring changes on the ground.
- “We are pleased to announce that Tokio Marine has entered into a strategic collaboration with ICEYE by participating in their Series D financing round,”said Masashi Namatame, Group Chief Digital Officer, Tokio Marine Holdings. “We have been working with ICEYE since 2020 and jointly developed an insurance claims processing solution for floods, that streamlines and enables quicker delivery of claim payments. This collaboration represents both ICEYE and Tokio Marine’s strong commitment to take positive action and initiative against additional risks. By combining ICEYE’s vertically integrated satellite solutions and Tokio Marine’s historical data, we strongly believe that we can develop multiple solutions to address serious natural catastrophe risks and support our customers and society throughout the world in their time of need.”
- “Our collaboration with Tokio Marine to date has been integral to the advancements that we have made in our insurance-focused solutions,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “Today’s announcement marks the next stage in our collaboration as we work to develop new products and services that have the potential to be transformative for insurance. By capitalizing on satellite data, analytical capabilities, artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can enhance responsiveness to catastrophic events, support more effective claims management, ensure speedier payment to those affected, and augment disaster detection capabilities.”
- ICEYE operates the world’s first SAR satellite constellation focused on the insurance industry. By combining data from its spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources it creates easily ingestible hazard data which can be delivered to the insurance company in near real-time.
• February 3, 2022: ICEYE today announced the closing of a $136M Series D funding round, led by long-standing investor Seraphim Space. New strategic investors to ICEYE also include BAE Systems and Kajima Ventures. In addition, Molten Ventures, OTB Ventures, True Ventures, C16 Ventures, Chione Ltd, Services Group of America, the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), Space Capital and Promus Ventures have also participated in the funding round. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC served as placement agent for the transaction. 29)
- With this latest funding round, ICEYE has raised a total of $304M in financing since 2015. ICEYE owns and operates the world’s largest constellation of SAR satellites and the company has successfully launched 16 satellite missions in total since its first-ever spacecraft was placed into orbit only four years ago.
- ICEYE will use the new capital to grow its innovative Natural Catastrophe solutions offering and to further develop its leading satellite constellation and technology, reducing time to access and increasing the visiting frequency of its satellites. The company will also make further investments towards its growth globally, particularly its analytics services, which includes artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- “ICEYE has gone from strength-to-strength since we first invested in the company in 2017. We’ve watched the company prove the impossible, possible by launching the world’s first miniaturised SAR satellite capable of imaging the planet day and night, to now having grown into being the world’s largest operator of SAR imaging satellites,” said James Bruegger, Chief Investment Officer of Seraphim Space (Manager) LLP. “As the world’s leading specialist investor focused on the New Space ecosystem, we have identified ICEYE as one of the sector’s brightest stars. We anticipate that its global scale persistent monitoring of the planet will have a major impact in helping address some of our most pressing challenges.”
- “Our entire ICEYE team has built a solid reputation by delivering concrete results to our customers with unmatched timelines and quality of service,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “We are proud of that track record, and we intend to build and improve upon it. With this new funding round, we’ll be able to continue expanding our operations and further develop our NatCat solutions which is an important focus area to accelerate our growth.”
- ICEYE’s constellation is designed to provide customers with reliable and frequent imagery enabling the rapid detection and tracking of changes on the Earth’s surface, regardless of time of day, or weather conditions. This capability is ideally suited for applications such as insurance loss adjustment, natural catastrophe response and recovery, national security, humanitarian relief and climate change monitoring.
- “This round of funding shows the confidence our new and returning investors have in ICEYE and ensures the company will continue on its path for growth,” said Susan Repo, Chief Financial Officer at ICEYE. “We are proud of our ability to meet our customers at their point of need, and this financing will help us continue to do exactly that.”
- ICEYE designs, manufactures, and operates its SAR satellites in-house, with manufacturing timelines brought down to a few months for its spacecraft. On January 13, 2022, ICEYE launched two SAR satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch also marked the first satellite built, licensed, and operated by ICEYE US.
- In conjunction with OTB Ventures, the European Investment Fund (EIF) participated as an investor through the InnovFin For Equity (IFE) programme, which is backed by the European Commission.
• January 20, 2022: ICEYE US, a subsidiary of ICEYE announced today that it has received a contract from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). This contract enables ICEYE US to participate in the NRO’s evaluation of commercial remote sensing companies operating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. 30)
- With a focus on modeling and simulation, ICEYE US will support NRO’s detailed assessment of imaging modes, image quality, geolocation accuracy and coverage among other important technical parameters. The contract represents a critical step in NRO’s plan to leverage next generation commercial radar providers to deliver innovative, resilient, and responsive satellite imagery for intelligence, defense, and humanitarian efforts.
- “ICEYE US is privileged to be recognized as a NRO mission partner,” said Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE US. “We are committed to advancing state-of-the-art commercial remote sensing capabilities for the U.S. Government and dramatically improving NRO’s access to flight-proven satellites that collect high resolution radar imagery anywhere on Earth.”
- ICEYE US builds and operates U.S.-licensed SAR spacecraft from its facility in Irvine, California. The company successfully launched its first-ever satellite earlier this month with SpaceX and Exolaunch. ICEYE’s satellites are small, each weighing about 220 pounds, but provide customers with detailed images and measurements of activities on the surface of the Earth. Such satellites can be continually improved on ground and in space with new technologies and in response to specific customer requirements.
- “Our objective with this NRO effort is to demonstrate how ICEYE spacecraft provide global situational awareness and complement existing government systems so that NRO can best satisfy future U.S. Government GEOINT requirements,” said Eric Jensen, President of ICEYE US. “We are delighted to partner with NRO to equip end users with the most relevant, high-quality data needed to support critical decision-making.”
- At any given time, most of the Earth is covered in clouds or darkness. Unlike traditional Earth observation satellites, ICEYE’s small radar imaging satellites can form high-resolution images of areas of the Earth in daylight, at night, and through cloud cover. In other words, they can “see” any part of the Earth multiple times a day. ICEYE’s satellites can collect images over wide areas and even more detailed images over smaller points of interest. This provides customers with persistent coverage of fast breaking events on the ground in all weather conditions.
• December 15, 2021: MDA Ldt. and ICEYE today announced at the World Satellite Business Week event that they have entered into an agreement for ICEYE to supply an X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) spacecraft for CHORUS, MDA’s next generation commercial Earth observation mission. A collaborative multi-sensor constellation, CHORUS brings together diverse and unique imagery and data sources, changing how and when we see the world by providing a new level of real-time insight and innovative Earth observation services.31)
- Building on the legendary RADARSAT program, CHORUS will include C-band and X-band SAR satellites operating in a unique mid-inclination orbit with day or night imaging in all weather conditions. An essential element of the CHORUS constellation, the X-band spacecraft will fly in the same mid-inclination orbit with the identical ground track as the MDA-built C-band SAR satellite.
- This revolutionary approach will provide the most extensive radar imaging capacity available on the market, with higher imaging performance, higher frequency imaging, variable imaging times, more imaging time per orbit, fast tasking, faster delivery timelines and Near Real-Time (NRT) data exploitation aided by machine-learning and artificial intelligence.
- Adding a trailing high-resolution X-band SAR satellite to a powerful C-band SAR satellite will also unlock new use cases, including tipping and cueing techniques that allow MDA’s leading broad area sensor to monitor an area of interest (the “tip”) and to zoom in on objects of interest (the “cue”) using the trailing high resolution sensor.
- Combining C-band and X-band capabilities, CHORUS will significantly enhance existing services and enable new applications not feasible with existing SAR satellites. Features include:
a) Designed with a focus on maritime surveillance applications, CHORUS will have dedicated vessel detection imaging modes with an imaging capacity to collect an area equal to 40% of the global Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) – or over 55 million km2 – every day using the 25 m Vessel Detection Mode.
b) CHORUS will enable a new level of precision all-weather satellite monitoring of icebergs in the North Atlantic. This is currently achieved by crewed aircraft observations supplemented with Earth observation satellite imagery.
c) The mission will enable tipping and cueing operations between wide area surveillance to high-resolution point target monitoring. This unique capability is especially useful, when fused with space-based Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, for use cases such as broad area ship detection and vessel classification to support dark vessel detection activities.
d) The X-band satellite will operate in a trailing orbit which will enhance image correlation, allowing for more effective image fusion, measurements, exploitation and event or object characterization.
- The companies also announced that they have signed a separate distribution agreement that will allow MDA to sell ICEYE’s existing and future X-band data to select RADARSAT-2 customers as well as to develop value-added products to immediately take advantage of advanced information data integration and analytics from these two types of SAR sensors.
- MDA owns and operates RADARSAT-2, one of the world’s most capable commercial broad-area imaging satellites. With over 20 imaging modes, and established customers in over 45 countries, RADARSAT-2 delivers operationally reliable products and services supporting a number of use cases, including marine surveillance, ice monitoring, disaster management, environmental monitoring, resource management and mapping.
- ICEYE operates the world’s largest commercial constellation of SAR satellites and has launched 14 spacecraft to date. The company is planning to further expand its constellation with at least four additional satellites by mid-2022, with the objective of reaching an average access time of three hours anywhere on the globe.
- “We are thrilled to be working with ICEYE to add the X-band satellite for our ground-breaking CHORUS constellation. We now have two best-in-class technologies working together in harmony to bring new insights and actionable data for our customers’ demanding requirements. The agreement to distribute ICEYE data starting now to our RADARSAT-2 customers enables immediate action on the expansion of our information services roadmap.” Mike Greenley, Chief Executive Officer, MDA.
- “With these pivotal agreements, we recognize an excellent opportunity to showcase the very best of ICEYE’s capabilities and expertise with MDA. ICEYE will ensure the latest high-performance X-band SAR satellite technology and data are seamlessly integrated and always available as part of MDA's CHORUS constellation. We are very proud to strengthen our relationship with MDA and we look forward to delivering them with best-in-class SAR capability for many years to come.” Rafal Modrzewski, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, ICEYE.
• December 02, 2021: ICEYE today announced the opening of a new office in Luxembourg. The office will also include ICEYE’s new Machine Learning Center of Excellence, where the company will look to explore, develop, and lead its advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence for synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) and earth observation technologies. 32)

- ”We are thrilled to be opening our new office in the beautiful city of Luxembourg,” says Steven Scheers, Chief People & Culture Officer at ICEYE. “Our aim is to attract the best talent in the world for our increasingly growing company. Having an increased footprint, right in the center of Europe, will play a pivotal role in helping ICEYE attract the best available opportunities from a talent pool perspective.”
- The opening of ICEYE’s Luxembourg office was completed in conjunction with the Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) and its investment in ICEYE’s Series C investment round. The fund aims to stimulate the diversification and sustainable development of the Luxembourgish economy by attracting Venture Capital fund managers and early to later stage innovative businesses into Luxembourg. It was set up by the European Investment Fund and the Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI).
- “On behalf of Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF), a shareholder in ICEYE since Dec. 2019, we are very pleased to see the company’s opening of a Luxembourg office,” says Patrick Nickels, SNCI Chairman. “ICEYE’s decision to open their next European office in Luxembourg affirms that the country has successfully positioned itself as a hub for the growing space & satellite sector. The company’s office opening furthermore evidences its positive commercial traction with more and more clients requiring access to timely and reliable radar satellite imagery.”
- “The opening of our Machine Learning Center of Excellence in Luxembourg will cultivate an applied machine learning team that will be at the forefront of our industry,” says Dr. Abdullah Almaksour, Machine Learning Team Lead at ICEYE. “Advancing what machine learning, computer vision and AI really mean for SAR technology, we’ll be able to focus and develop our research capabilities surrounding our existing use cases for natural catastrophes and deforestation while also exploring future solutions for our customers.”
- The new ICEYE office will be located in Luxembourg City’s historical neighborhood of Ville Haute inside the premises of the Spaces Boulevard Royal building.
• November 18, 2021: ICEYE announced today that it has entered into a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Technical Center (SMDTC) to advance state-of-the-art Earth observation technology in support of U.S. Army missions. 33)

- This joint R&D effort will explore low-cost, on-orbit, synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) related concepts. The areas of interest include exploration of cost-effective SAR systems including imagery tasking and uplink, SAR satellite downlink and ground station(s), image processing, and image dissemination as these abilities relate to U.S. Army and other DoD requirements more broadly. Emphasis will be placed on significant data latency reduction between the sensor and the shooter, as well as interfacing with the U.S. Army’s current Common Ground Terminal (CGT) and the future Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), a mobile ground station system that’s currently under development.
- “The U.S Army is looking for affordable and versatile SAR and other advanced sensor technology to enhance its many systems and missions. High-quality, frequent-revisit commercial SAR is particularly important to us because it enables day-night, all-weather imaging and complements national satellite systems,” said Colonel Matt Anderson, SMDC’s Space Directorate leader.
- “It’s our privilege to be the U.S. Army’s mission partner in this cooperative R&D effort,” said Eric Jensen, President of ICEYE U.S. “We look forward to working closely with SMDTC as we bring ICEYE’s first-of-its-kind capability to a variety of U.S. Army experiments and demonstrations.”
- Noted Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE U.S., “We are proud to be manufacturing, launching, and operating our satellites in the United States, where we are delivering on our commitments and earning the trust of defense, civil, intelligence, and commercial customers.”
- At any given time, most of the Earth is covered in clouds or darkness. Unlike traditional Earth observation satellites, ICEYE’s small radar imaging satellites can form high-resolution images of areas of the Earth in daylight, at night, and through cloud cover. In other words, they can “see” any part of the Earth multiple times a day. ICEYE’s satellites can collect images over very wide areas as well as spot collects over specific sites anywhere in the world. ICEYE has successfully launched 14 spacecraft to date and operates the world’s largest fleet of commercial SAR satellites.
• November 17, 2021: G42, the leading Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company and ICEYE, a Finnish Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite and analytics provider, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on developing advanced SAR products. 34)

- The agreement between the companies will bring together ICEYE’s existing satellite constellation and solutions and G42’s geospatial analytics, cloud computing, and AI capabilities for customers in the UAE and beyond. ICEYE’s provision of both historical and future SAR imagery and G42 through its AI research arm, the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIAI), will jointly develop advanced algorithms and analytics with ICEYE to serve local customers in various fields. Bayanat, G42’s geospatial products and services company will benefit by providing these solutions to customers in various domains including oil & gas, municipalities, maritime, environment, disaster management, public safety, and other areas. Additionally, ICEYE will also deploy its cloud-based Near Real Time (NRT) SAR processing capabilities on G42 Cloud to enhance G42’s geospatial analytics platform.
- G42 recently signed an agreement with Yahsat to bring together a powerful combination of advanced space technology and satellite communications expertise with AI and Big Data. The agreement between G42 and ICEYE promises to augment that objective and provide a holistic offering to end users, as well as enhance the UAE’s position as a key destination for world-class space companies looking to serve this market and potentially jointly develop future satellites in-country.
- ICEYE operates the world’s largest commercial constellation of SAR satellites and has launched 14 spacecraft so far. The company is planning to further expand its constellation with at least four additional satellites by mid-2022, with the objective of reaching an average access time of three hours anywhere on the globe.
- Talal Al Kaissi, VP of the G42 Space Program said, “The combination of ICEYE's near real-time image acquisition capability coupled with G42’s advanced AI, cloud, and supercomputing capabilities, presents a compelling offering to end-users that require actionable intelligence in a digestible format to enable swift decision making. There are a multitude of new use cases in a variety of different industries that can benefit from such products, and we plan to leverage our ecosystem partners in collaboration with ICEYE to unlock these markets.”
- Jamil Kawar, Director of Global Sales at ICEYE said, “This is truly a ground-breaking collaboration for ICEYE and it’s a first major step in the Middle East region for our increasingly growing company. I’d like to thank the G42 organization for the trust they have put in our ICEYE team and we eagerly look forward to further cementing the great collaboration between both our companies moving forward.”
- G42 is an Abu Dhabi-based global leader in artificial intelligence and cloud computing obsessed about exploring the full potential of AI as a tool that powers progress.
• November 17, 2021: ICEYE today announced a new collaboration with Aon plc , a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions, to provide insurers with flood hazard data following severe flooding events in Japan, helping them to reduce volatility and better understand the post-event impact on their portfolios. 35)
- According to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), Japan experiences an average of three typhoon landfalls and several flood events annually. In 2018 and 2019, the country was subject to three of the five largest wind and flood insurance losses in Japan’s history, with insurers settling claims of more than $30 billion over the two-year period.
- Rupert Moore, CEO for Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions in Japan, said: “Aon and ICEYE share a belief that better data leads to better decisions and, in turn, better outcomes. Our collaboration with ICEYE aims to assist clients with improving the robustness and accuracy of their responses to flooding events in Japan as they navigate this form of volatility. The combination of ICEYE’s technology and Aon’s buildings database provides a unique and innovative way for them to better address potential claims post-flooding in the country with more information and insights.”
- The satellite solution combines ICEYE’s Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) data with Aon’s digital building datasets generated by using Aon’s patented technology to deliver near real-time insights on the potential consequences of flood events. This allows insurers to assess the potential impact of a flood on their portfolio within 24 hours of the water’s peak, enhancing insurers’ reserving and claims handling process with a faster response time.
- Rafal Modrzewski,ICEYE’s CEO, said: “Both of our firms have a laser focus on helping insurers reduce their combined ratios, improve their service to policyholders and close the protection gap. The collaboration between ICEYE and Aon demonstrates our continued commitment to helping clients leverage innovations that deliver strategic value. Together we are enabling the kind of digital transformation that will lead to a step change in efficiency and client service for the insurance industry.”
- Aon plc is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance.

• November 10, 2021: ICEYE today announced an agreement with McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS) of London, UK, providing flood hazard analysis throughout active flood events to support the company in its delivery of property loss numbers to the Lloyd’s market via the MIS Global Events Observer (GEO) platform. 36)
- Under the agreement, ICEYE will provide MIS with active flood hazard data before, during and after large-scale flood events. This information will include data relating to flood depth at the individual building level across the affected areas, combining satellite imagery generated by synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) plus flood measurements from auxiliary sources, including river and tidal gauges, digital elevation models, ground sensors and watershed maps.
- Critical to ICEYE’s offering is that it provides an independently verifiable, transparent, and consistent method of establishing an accurate flood depth measurement in near real-time for any location anywhere in the world. ICEYE can provide these services to any insurer or reinsurer globally.
- MIS provides ‘decisions-as-a-service’, taking multiple data sources, including satellite, drone, and CCTV images, into its GEO platform to provide the insurance industry with observation-based portfolio and individual property loss estimates, allowing for automated claims processing and reporting.
- The company’s core product, GEO, was developed using co-funding from the European Space Agency’s Business Applications program and supercharges the firm’s ability to collect and analyze highly accurate, geotagged external data from a huge range of space and ground sources.
- “We are delighted to be announcing our agreement with McKenzie Intelligence Services,” says Lisa Wardlaw, Global Head of Insurance Solutions at ICEYE. “This partnership brings together two Lloyd’s Lab graduates, combining best-in-class observation analysis from ICEYE with the innovative ‘decisions-as-a-service’ platform GEO from MIS. By supplying ICEYE’s proprietary flood hazard data, we can enhance the services that MIS is delivering under its two-year partnership with Lloyd’s and deliver world-class satellite imagery and data to the market.”
- “We are very pleased to be joining forces with ICEYE on providing flood loss analysis to the Lloyd’s market,” says Forbes McKenzie, CEO of MIS. “Through our participation in the Future at Lloyd’s program over the past two years, we have gained unprecedented insights into how our technology can add additional value to the whole insurance value chain. This new partnership will add further value cases for Lloyd’s syndicates and deepen our understanding of flood risks. We look forward to working with ICEYE to better serve the Lloyd’s marketplace.”
- McKenzie Intelligence Services is an insurtech providing AI driven Geographic Information System (GIS) Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions to the insurance and related verticals. The Global Events Observer (GEO) platform is a market leading platform providing real life peril data to insurers to enable an effective, efficient and cost-effective response to a catastrophic event anywhere on Earth.
• November 4, 2021: ICEYE today announced a contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support the monitoring and response to environmental hazards in the maritime sector. 37)
- With this partnership, ICEYE will provide NOAA with radar satellite imagery to evaluate the impact of different environmental hazards in near-real time including oil spills, large-scale illegal fishing operations and ocean conditions related to the accumulation of marine debris. In addition, NOAA is looking into using ICEYE to identify already burned areas within active fires to help fire responders. The need for NOAA to monitor these hazards twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, is supported by ICEYE’s around the clock tasking capabilities.
- The collaboration will expand on NOAA’s recent use of ICEYE imagery that was used in combination with other sources to respond to environmental hazards. Both parties collaborated closely after Hurricane Ida to verify the condition of oil rigs and infrastructure along the Gulf Coast, resulting in NOAA identifying over a dozen oil spills.
- NOAA also leveraged ICEYE’s satellite imagery off the coast of southern California in response to the recent oil leak from a submerged pipeline. The imagery and data provided by ICEYE offered situational awareness to oil spill response crews by identifying the migration of the oil on the water and its movement over time caused by tides, currents and winds.
- “At ICEYE, we often say that you can’t respond to what you can’t see,” says Eric Jensen, President of ICEYE US. “With the world's largest constellation of SAR satellites, we are able to offer unmatched monitoring capabilities for our clients, providing them with the ability to persistently monitor any location on earth, at any time of day and in any type of weather. We are very pleased to be able to collaborate with NOAA in their response efforts and we look forward to assisting them on future events.”
- Unlike a traditional Earth imaging satellite, ICEYE’s constellation of SAR satellites bounce a powerful radar beam off the surface of the earth from approximately 550 kilometers in space, thereby painting a picture of what is happening on the ground below. The technology can see through clouds, smoke and even image the ground at night. This provides customers with persistent coverage of fast breaking events on the ground and in all weather conditions.

• October 20, 2021: ICEYE, a provider of flood hazard data, today announced a partnership with Descartes Underwriting, the largest independent parametric-specialized firm. The collaboration will push the frontier of flood risk modelling and parametric insurance by combining Descartes’ ability to incorporate state-of-the-art technology into its parametric insurance product design with ICEYE’s innovative synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) flood data and monitoring capabilities. Leveraging ICEYE’s multi-source flood insights, Descartes will be able to establish precise parametric triggers for a larger global client-base and make swift claims payment based on exact client locations within a flood event. 38)
- Floods rank among the most costly and recurrent natural hazards across all regions of the world. Compounded by climate change, flood risk has also proven increasingly challenging to model and insure. Accurate assessment and data coverage for areas with granular elevation changes, or rapidly expanding impervious surfaces, pose technical hurdles for insurers. Data loss and inaccuracies during flood events, due to the inherent vulnerabilities of physical flood gauges and sensors, can also prove especially challenging for insurance pricing and claims processing. The partnership between Descartes Underwriting and ICEYE seeks to address these pain points.
- With a growing fleet of SAR satellites in orbit, ICEYE can provide insurance companies with a verifiable method of measuring flood depth globally in near real-time. The solution, which combines ICEYE’s SAR data with measurements from auxiliary sources, can enable insurance companies to provide parametric coverage for flood events at any location in the world. The global coverage of ICEYE imagery also allows the expansion of parametric insurance policies into regions and geographies where data limitations impeded previous coverage.
- Sébastien Piguet, Co-founder & Head of Underwriting at Descartes Underwriting: “We consider access to accurate data, provided by an independent third party, to be a prerequisite for all parametric insurance contracts. We are thus delighted to partner with ICEYE to advance the frontier of parametric flood insurance and expand our offering to a wider geographic client-base based on ICEYE’s data.”
- Lisa Wardlaw, Global Head of Insurance Solutions at ICEYE: “The climate crisis calls for a revolutionary approach to insurance that fuses science, data and finance. We are proud to partner with Descartes, a company that shares our commitment to innovation. Our unique global flood monitoring solutions consistently provide data on whether a given parameter has been met or exceeded at any location worldwide. By reporting on such activity quickly and effectively, ICEYE is enabling flood monitoring that has been impossible until now.”
• October 12, 2021: ESA signed a contract that brings the ICEYE constellation of small satellites into the fleet of missions contributing to Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring program. As a commercial provider of satellite radar imagery, ICEYE is a perfect example of European New Space being implemented within Copernicus. 39) 40)
- With the contract signed during ESA’s Φ-week – an event which this year focuses on the New Space economy – the timing couldn’t have been more apt.

- ESA’s Acting Head of Earth Observation Programs, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, said, “I am confident that ICEYE’s commercial constellation of small synthetic aperture radar satellites, with the objective of providing near-realtime monitoring capability of the globe, will make an excellent contribution to the Copernicus Emergency Monitoring Service and to the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, for example.”

- While the suite of Sentinel missions that ESA develops and builds, and in many cases operates on behalf of the European Commission, are central to the European Union’s Copernicus program, there are different other commercial satellite missions that play a crucial role in delivering complementary very high-resolution Earth observation data to answer to the data needs of the Copernicus Services and public authorities.
- ESA’s responsibility here includes coordinating all the Copernicus Contributing Mission activities as part of the Copernicus program on behalf of the European Commission.
- ICEYE builds and operates a commercial constellation of small synthetic aperture radar satellites. So far, 14 satellites have been launched and ICEYE plans to expand its constellation up to 18 satellites by mid-2022, with the objective of reaching an average access time of three hours anywhere on the globe.
- The mission is used in many sectors, from monitoring floods and mining activities, to marine vessel detection and iceberg monitoring.
- The ICEYE satellite constellation will complement existing synthetic aperture radar missions in the Copernicus program.
- Toni Tolker-Nielsen continued, “We are particularly proud to work with ICEYE, which is one the few New Space companies that we have in Europe in the field of Earth observation. In fact, this is not the first contract that ESA has signed with ICEYE. For a few years now, ESA has been buying ICEYE data and making them available to scientists and to pilot activities. I encourage scientists to use ICEYE data through the Earthnet program.”
• October 7, 2021: ICEYE has announced today the appointment of Lisa Wardlaw as Global Head of Insurance Solutions. In this new role, Wardlaw will lead ICEYE’s efforts to deliver natural catastrophe data solutions to help catalyze the digital transformation of the insurance industry globally. 41)

- ICEYE owns and operates the largest synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) constellation in the world and offers solutions focused on the unique needs of government and the insurance sector. By combining data from spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources, ICEYE can provide actionable insights about natural hazards in near real time to its customers.
- Wardlaw is a highly accomplished strategy and innovation executive with extensive finance, operational and digital experience. Over a 25-year career, she has helped transform and differentiate several insurance businesses. She joins ICEYE from Farmers Insurance, a subsidiary of Zurich Insurance Group, where she was Chief Strategic Financial Officer. Prior to this, Wardlaw was Global Chief Digital Strategy & Transformation Officer for Global Reinsurance at Munich Re.
- “This is an incredible time to be joining ICEYE,” said Wardlaw. “Our priority is to deliver on ICEYE’s mission to make the impossible possible for our insurance customers. We have a huge opportunity; the ability to combine capabilities that never existed before in ways that will help transform the insurance industry. ICEYE is already helping its clients cover and respond to natural catastrophes in new and innovative ways. It’s an incredible innovation challenge. With groundbreaking capabilities and a laser focus on the needs of the insurance value chain, we are re-imaging traditional norms and business models in ways that are strategically important.”
- So far in 2021, ICEYE has tracked more than 450 potential flood events globally, imaged over 350 potential flood events, and analyzed over 30 flood events which each spanned a total area of at least 20,000 km2. In total, the company has launched 14 SAR satellites since 2018, with the most recent launch of four new spacecraft taking place in July. ICEYE also recently joined the seventh cohort of the Lloyd’s of London’s innovation accelerator program, Lloyd’s Lab.
- ICEYE also today announced Daniel Stander as a Senior Advisor. Stander has spent the last 20 years at the interface of risk and innovation. He is currently a Senior Advisor to the United Nations on matters of risk finance, as well as Deputy Chair of the Resilient Cities Network. He also has extensive experience in quantifying, managing and financing climate risk, having held several leadership positions at Risk Management Solutions (RMS), where he was most recently Global Managing Director.
- “The insurance industry has long demanded faster access to accurate, actionable insights - especially in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic event. Properly integrated into the insurance ecosystem, ICEYE’s data can drive efficiencies, improve responsiveness, and ultimately enhance coverage and service to those in need,” Stander said. “A key part of my advisory role for ICEYE is meeting with insurers, re-insurers, brokers and loss adjusters, refining how ICEYE can bridge the data gap with timely access to critical hazard and damage data. The initial feedback from the market has been hugely encouraging.”
- Commenting on the appointments, Charles Blanchet, ICEYE’s Vice President of Solutions, added: “At ICEYE, we are fully committed to collaborating with the re/insurance sector to help transform how it predicts, prevents and responds to catastrophic events. A core part of that is investing in market-leading talent; executives who lead with authenticity, who bring deep domain expertise and a relentless client focus. I couldn’t be happier with today’s announcement. Daniel’s guidance so far has been invaluable to the leadership team at ICEYE. Lisa, a pioneer of digital innovation in the insurance market, will in her new role doubtless continue to help reinvent the industry she loves. Nobody is as committed as ICEYE to transforming the insurance value chain with persistent monitoring. Today’s announcement demonstrates that commitment.”
• July 6, 2021: ICEYE announced today the achievement of Daily Coherent Ground Track Repeat (GTR) imaging with ICEYE radar satellites. This new, world-first capability enables detecting everything from large changes, such as monitoring if ships have moved, all the way to such detailed changes on-ground that a person on-site would not be able to recognize. The data enables performing Coherent Change Detection (CCD) every 24 hours, which has use cases in detailed monitoring of patterns of life, site activity, ground subsidence, infrastructure integrity, construction, and more. 42)

- ICEYE now provides the world’s most frequent coherent radar satellite data coverage to a selected initial set of customers. The capability is delivered to customers as daily imagery delivered from individual customer-selected locations. This newly demonstrated capability is expected to be available for a wider customer base in 2022, after the initial early access period.
- “When you need to know what happens at a chosen location, you need the right technologies to acquire that information. ICEYE has spent the last three years actively pursuing this revolutionary capability for our customers, as it provides an unparalleled basis for performing change detection.” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “This is a completely new level of performance. It enables four times more frequent persistent monitoring with radar satellites than has ever been available before.”
- Coherence is a term given for the exact similarity between two radar satellite images. If a car has driven across a field, stockpiles have been adjusted, or forested areas have been cut down, these are seen as changes in the coherence between the chosen two images taken from different times of that location.

- The compelling advantage of ICEYE’s Daily Coherent GTR capability is that it allows quickly determining small changes at a location on a consistent daily basis. This type of persistent monitoring is intended for knowing exactly the level of activity at a chosen site. The Daily Coherent GTR capability is available either in very high resolution imaging for smaller areas, or wider area coverage at high resolution.
- Radar satellite data acquired with this capability enables data users to perform interferometric and coherence analysis. The technical achievement is a result of a successful orbit adjustment of ICEYE’s satellites, which allow the same locations on Earth to be imaged from exactly the same orbit placement every 24 hours. It is the precision and repeatability of the imaging angles that enable ICEYE to deliver this new capability, in addition to the globally unique spacecraft design of ICEYE.
- “The ability to image the same area at the same angle each day creates new opportunities for detecting daily changes that were not previously possible. By overlaying stacks of daily images, it is now possible to rapidly determine if objects have moved or entered the scene.” said Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE US. “For example, we can monitor activities at a port and quickly identify changes, whether it’s commodities sitting on the docks or ships in the harbor. We have previewed this technology with some of our U.S. customers and the response has been amazing.”

- Last week, ICEYE launched four more synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites with SpaceX, bringing the total number of the company’s radar satellite missions launched to 14. One of the newest spacecraft is a next-generation demonstration mission, which is set to double the effective resolution of ICEYE’s proprietary imaging instrument, while the other three satellites are set to deliver data to customers with flight-proven technology after commissioning is finalized.
• June 23, 2021: ICEYE, the global leader in persistent monitoring of the Earth with radar satellite imaging, announced today it has partnered with Makoto Higashi to act as the General Manager of ICEYE's business operations in Japan. Mr. Higashi has over 40 years of experience in business operations, including previous positions as the CEO & President of Japan Space Imaging Corporation, and GM, GEOINT, at Hitachi Ltd. ICEYE's operations in Japan will be dedicated to services for the Japanese government and local commercial organizations. Within the first 12 months, ICEYE plans to open an office in Tokyo and expand to an initial 10-person team serving the Japanese market. 43)
- What ICEYE has accomplished in satellite operations and services for its government customers is remarkable. My intent is to continue on that path to help provide crucial information and dedicated services with radar satellite data to the Japanese satellite data market.” Makoto Higashi, General Manager, ICEYE Japan “Only those satellite data companies that have withstood the strict requirements of government customers have prospered. ICEYE is very well-respected in this regard worldwide. The Japanese market has an opportunity to access remarkable aerospace capabilities with the data products ICEYE has to offer.”
- The insurance organization Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance is among ICEYE’s Japan-based customer base. The organization receives ICEYE’s insights from its global flood monitoring solution to serve its insurance customers with significantly faster claims payments after natural catastrophes.
- "ICEYE’s advanced technology in SAR image acquisition & near real-time data analysis brought our long-term business goals to reality and even has potential to transform beyond our claim service operation," said Hidenori Kobayashi, Deputy General Manager at Tokyo Marine & Nichido Fire insurance.
- ICEYE Japan offices are opening in Tokyo within the next 12 months, with initial recruitment focusing on local commercial operations. ICEYE has so far launched 10 radar satellite missions since early 2018, including dedicated satellites for customers. The company has gathered $152 million in financing to date, with offices in Finland, Poland, US, UK, Spain, and Japan. For 2020, ICEYE has reported $50 million in signed contracts for the year.
• June 10, 2021: ICEYE radar satellite data is now fully integrated into The ESA Third Party Missions (TPM) program, which allows for sponsored SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data access to researchers and Earth Observation (EO) application developers. 44)
- ICEYE, Finnish New Space and global leader in persistent monitoring of the Earth through its constellation of radar imaging satellites, announced today that the ESA Earth Observation Program Board has approved the integration of ICEYE’s satellite imagery into the Third Party Missions (TPMs) data portfolio. Through this programme, ESA facilitates access to ICEYE’s SAR data free-of-charge for scientific, research and pre-operational Earth Observation based applications.
- “We are delighted to join the prestigious ESA Earthnet TPM Program. The programme is an incredible resource for the global Earth observation community, and especially for research data users.”, said Tero Vauraste, Regional Director Europe, ICEYE. “As the first New Space organization to do so, ICEYE provides data in all radar imaging modes through the program: Spot, Strip, Scan. With these, data users have sponsored access to the full range of SAR imagery from very high resolution to wide area coverage.”
- ESA, through the Earthnet Program offers free-of-charge data to international Principal Investigators from a variety of EO satellite missions developed and operated by space agencies and by commercial data providers. The data can be used for research and development of applications for pre-operational use. ESA also utilizes Third Party Satellite imagery for its own projects. ICEYE imagery was thoroughly and successfully validated in previous program stages under the Earthnet Data Assessment framework before becoming part of the full TPM portfolio.
- “We are very pleased to welcome ICEYE as a Third Party Mission partner and to disseminate its SAR satellite images through the ESA Earthnet Program.”, said Peggy Fischer, Mission Manager of ESA Third Party Missions. “ICEYE's constantly growing satellite constellation and the high quality of SAR images are an unprecedented data source and an asset for ESA’s Third Party Mission portfolio.”
- All current ICEYE imaging modes are offered through this program. Users get access to the very high-resolution Spot imaging mode covering areas of 25 km2, the high-resolution Strip and the recently launched Scan imaging mode covering areas of 10,000 km2, respectively. It is possible to obtain archive data or request new image acquisitions.
- The ESA TPM process includes the submission of a project proposal on the ESA Earth Online portal.
- The TPM program, funded under ESA's Earthnet program, has been in existence for more than four decades and has established global collaboration between space agencies, mission and data providers for the benefit of the Earth Observation community.
• May 10, 2021: Finnish New Space leader ICEYE announced today the commercial availability of wide area imaging capabilities covering 10,000 km2 data acquisitions with its SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite constellation. ICEYE is the only New Space SAR satellite provider to achieve wide-area Scan mode imaging, with up to a 100-times larger area coverage from the closest alternatives in the marketplace. Thanks to the completely unique system design of ICEYE’s SAR satellites, ICEYE is now able to provide the world’s single most comprehensive persistent monitoring capabilities both for land and sea data use cases. 45)
- “It’s really exciting to see another world first from ICEYE. Our leading-edge persistent monitoring capabilities, now boosted with Scan mode, enable our commercial and government customers to quickly and effortlessly survey huge areas for purposes such as sea ice monitoring, ensuring maritime safety and national security use cases,” said Steve Young, Vice President, Business Development and Sales, ICEYE. “Our unique satellite constellation and technology approach makes ICEYE’s capability something alternative approaches simply aren’t able to match.”
- ICEYE’s new Scan imaging is particularly effective for acquiring wide coverage imagery for maritime use cases, where national security authorities and maritime safety officials require persistent visibility into large sea areas. The alternative methods of monitoring these areas, such as airplanes and sending out patrol vessels to sea, are costly and not always feasible due to inclement weather or night time. Radar satellite imaging works both day and night, and even through cloud cover. ICEYE is the only New Space SAR data provider with a current system design that supports comprehensive wide area imaging.
- “We’ve done trials to Scan image areas as large as 100 km x 400 km (60 x 250 miles) with a single acquisition, covering areas at once that would take more than 1500 Spot images as a comparison,” said Pekka Laurila, CSO & Co-founder, ICEYE. “ICEYE continues to lead the way with several world first technology innovations for the benefit of our customers, as we have continually done since we launched the world’s first New Space SAR satellite over 3 years ago.”
- ICEYE was the world’s first company to launch a SAR satellite under 100 kg in 2018, the first New Space provider to achieve under 1-meter SAR resolution imaging in 2019, the first to demonstrate interferometric capabilities in 2020, and even the first to produce SAR videos from individual satellite passes also in 2020. In total, ICEYE has raised $152M in financing, launched 10 SAR missions, and has plans to launch up to 10 more spacecraft still in 2021.





• April 15, 2021: ICEYE today announced that it has opened a new manufacturing facility in Irvine, California. The company’s U.S. headquarters will host the production of multiple spacecraft simultaneously and also contain a research and development lab, offices, and a customer engagement space. Importantly, the Irvine location also houses a Mission Operations Center for monitoring and operating U.S. licensed spacecraft. 46)
- “With our new production facility in the U.S., we will add significant next-generation capabilities to our space and ground segments,” said Jerry Welsh, CEO of ICEYE US. “This will provide us with the most reliable operational foundation, and give us the flexibility and efficiency to best accommodate the requirements of our U.S. government customers.”
- In line with the company’s rapid growth and strong customer demand, ICEYE US is hiring talents that have skills in spacecraft engineering, assembly, integration and testing, project management, software development, ground services, sales, and customer service. The company expects to have offices on the east and west coasts by mid-2021.
- “Like other aerospace hubs around the country, Southern California has a rich space legacy, a tremendous talent pool, and an excellent base of suppliers and partners,” said Deepak Grover, Vice President of Operations at ICEYE US. “We look forward to further fueling our growth trajectory and Irvine is the perfect spot to set up our new facility.”
- In order to better serve U.S. customers, ICEYE has signed an agreement with In-Q-Tel to accelerate the delivery of cutting-edge capabilities to U.S. government organizations. In-Q-Tel identifies and partners with companies developing innovations that have both high national security impact and the potential for commercial success.
- “ICEYE’s world-class SAR satellites and their market-leading global coverage allows for capture despite time of day and weather conditions. We are pleased and excited to bring this technology to our government partners,” offered Simon Davidson, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel, and EVP, IQT Emerge.
- “It’s our privilege to join forces with In-Q-Tel to field advanced technologies relevant to our U.S. customers,” said Eric Jensen, President of ICEYE US. “Our new facility strengthens ICEYE’s ability to rapidly deliver decision-quality insights, to build assets for U.S. missions, and to address the hybrid architecture needs of the U.S. government as a trusted provider of commercial services.”
- At any given time, most of the Earth is covered in clouds or darkness. Unlike traditional Earth observation satellites, ICEYE’s small radar imaging satellites can form high-resolution images of areas of the Earth in daylight, at night, and through cloud cover. They can ‘see’ any part of the Earth multiple times a day. ICEYE has successfully launched 10 missions to date and operates the world’s largest fleet of commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites.
• March 31,2021: ICEYE announced today $50M in signed contracts last year for radar satellite imaging services, solutions, and satellite missions. This represents nearly 10X growth from the previous year. ICEYE’s real-time Earth observation capabilities transform existing businesses and government processes by adding substantial efficiency with specific knowledge about ongoing events around the globe. Ten new satellite missions are planned for 2021 to meet growing customer demand for data. 47)
- ICEYE is a pioneer in creating solutions relevant for natural catastrophe response with satellite imaging augmented with third-party data and real-time flood analysis. Earlier this month, the company announced a strategic partnership with Swiss Re, one of the world's leading reinsurers. Through this partnership, Swiss Re is able to generate fast and accurate portfolio and event-level loss numbers for the industry.
- The $50M in contracts signed represents relationships with customers in governments and in the commercial sector serving several vertical markets. In order to meet the increased customer demand for data, ICEYE plans to launch more satellites this year than originally forecasted, with a total of 10 new missions. The next launch is booked for mid-2021, including a next-generation satellite with new and innovative capabilities. With these new launches, ICEYE strengthens its delivery of best-in-class persistent monitoring services for its customers.
- “We are very excited to see the solutions business growing so fast. The satellites are primarily a data collection tool. ICEYE is a data company and its mission transforms businesses with the use of real-time earth observation,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “With the momentum built up last year, ICEYE continues as the foremost provider of SAR data and solutions based on radar satellite imaging in the world.”
- As ICEYE’s growth accelerates, key executives have been recently hired to its leadership team: Alan Thompson as VP Engineering, Shay Strong as VP Analytics, Marita Markkula as VP Marketing, Susan Repo as CFO and Steven Scheers as Head of People & Culture.
• March 2, 2021: ICEYE, the largest commercial synthetic-aperture Radar (SAR) satellite operator and flood monitoring provider, announces its strategic partnership with Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance and insurance. Building on ICEYE’s innovative technology, the partnership will advance flood risk management, assist disaster response and speed up claims payments globally. Swiss Re’s clients will benefit from enhanced insights and bespoke solutions. 48)
- The partnership combines ICEYE's flood monitoring competence with Swiss Re's risk knowledge to provide enhanced insights and tailored solutions for reinsurance and insurance clients worldwide.
- The partnership announced today will advance Swiss Re’s natural catastrophe services by enabling early warning systems and near real-time flood monitoring built on ICEYE’s world-leading flood monitoring capabilities with radar satellite imaging. ICEYE’s unique radar satellite constellation, high resolution imaging capabilities, and rapid response analysis fuels ICEYE’s monitoring solution, which offers global coverage for Swiss Re to track and react faster to floods around the globe.
- The strategic partnership will initially focus on floods and it is intended to expand to other perils soon after, such as wildfires, wind and earthquake damages.
- Flooding has been consistently one of the most recurrent and costly natural catastrophes our world suffers. Modelling floods has proven particularly challenging in locations with fine-scale changes in elevation, complex terrains and man-made structures as is typical for dense urban centers. The partnership aims to address exactly these areas where most of the flood modelling today falls short and thereby addressing the insurers’ pain points.
- Swiss Re will gain access to ICEYE’s SAR data on flood events on a global basis, high accuracy observation-based flood maps, snapshots of the developments of individual floods, and water depth estimations within 24 hours for these events. Swiss Re will make footprint assessments of the events available on CatNet® Premium – its proprietary geo risk platform – thereby enabling its clients faster loss assessment and payouts.
- Pranav Pasricha, Swiss Re’s Global Head of P&C Solutions: “We’re very pleased to announce the strategic partnership with ICEYE. By combining Swiss Re’s risk knowledge with ICEYE’s data, we will be able to further expand our capabilities in geo and remote sensing. The partnership will enable us to develop solutions, advance our services to the benefit of our clients and enable faster claims payouts. We see this as an important commitment for a serious natural catastrophe threat and think it could become a real game changer.”
- Charles Blanchet, VP Solutions, ICEYE: “Swiss Re has challenged ICEYE to create a transformative flood monitoring capability for the insurance industry, and they have helped us create it. We look forward to partnering with Swiss Re to give Swiss Re and their clients a competitive advantage in the market.”
• February 25, 2021: ICEYE, the global leader in persistent monitoring with radar satellite imaging, published today its first set of images from the three ICEYE SAR satellites launched at the end of January by the SpaceX Transporter-1 mission. All three spacecraft have successfully completed initial operations and are now progressing through the calibration process. Once the calibration stage and final preparations are completed, the spacecraft will become commercially available for customers to order images. Radar satellite imaging is used to monitor locations of interest both day and night, and even through cloud cover. 49)
- “With the largest fleet of SAR satellites in the world, optimized for mission specific performance, ICEYE is uniquely positioned to deliver best-in- class persistent monitoring performance,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “Seeing the first images from new spacecraft is always an exciting time. Each of the frames represent a massive amount of effort from our team.”
- The selected gallery of first radar satellite images from the three newest SAR satellites from ICEYE are provided in Figures 34, 35 and 36. Some of these images were taken as early as February 15, less than a month after launch.
- “Once we complete the calibration of these spacecraft, ICEYE will have the world’s largest SAR constellation.” said Jerry Welsh, CEO ICEYE U.S. “As our constellation expands, we improve our target revisit capabilities. Thanks to our optimized design, we are able to capture even the most target congested areas and provide unmatched persistent monitoring capabilities.”



• January 12, 2021: The private sector is coming out with new geospatial intelligence products and services faster than the government can figure out how to buy them. That means analysts need ways to procure commercial geoint “at a moment’s notice,” said David Gauthier, director of the NGA (National Geospatial Intelligence Agency) commercial and business operations group. 50)
- NGA supplies U.S. government agencies with geospatial intelligence derived from satellite images. Its sister agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), is responsible for procuring imagery for NGA.
- Most of the demand is for photographic imagery captured by electro-optical sensors in space but analysts are increasingly seeing the value of other sources of intelligence such as space-based synthetic aperture radar that can penetrate clouds, and radio frequency satellites that identify and geolocate the source of RF signals. A growing number of companies in the United States and Europe are offering these services.
- Gauthier said NGA is preparing to work with “hundreds of suppliers” and that will require an ability to do “real time solution matching” as needs arise, he said Jan. 12 on a webinar organized by the Smallsat Alliance, a space industry group.
- NGA and the NRO are stepping up market research to better understand what’s available, said Gauthier. Along with that, there is a need for a “very robust acquisition services office” that can bring the new technology to government users.
- Gauthier said the intelligence community slowly is pivoting to a “commercial first” mindset. “We’re promoting that strategy across leadership ... that basically says the cost of ignoring commercial capabilities is much worse than the cost of using them.”
- That view is shared by congressional committees. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act has provisions calling for DoD to use commercial geoint data and services.
- The NRO is looking to expand the pool of commercial imagery suppliers. Several companies received study contracts, including suppliers of electro-optical, radar, RF and hyperspectral imagery. The agency said procurement contracts will be awarded this year. NGA also has pilot programs under way aimed at developing new ways to work with commercial vendors.
- Gauthier said he could not comment on NRO procurement decisions. He said both NGA and the NRO are “committed to purchasing capabilities from commercial constellations.”

• October 13, 2020: ICEYE offers public access to the rapidly growing archive of radar satellite imagery acquired with the company’s SAR satellite constellation. 51)
- Finnish New Space leader ICEYE today announced access to ICEYE's Public Archive, containing nearly 18,000 images from ICEYE satellites. The ICEYE Public Archive includes radar imagery in various imaging modes taken with ICEYE’s SAR satellite constellation between mid-2019 and now. The ICEYE Public Archive consists of preview images from around the world, which are released under CC BY-NC 4.0 license, allowing for non-commercial use.
- “The ICEYE SAR satellite constellation is here for the global community of decision makers, data users, and more, to improve our shared world around us all,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “The ICEYE Public Archive opens up a unique view of the world, which we invite you to explore together with us.”
- The ICEYE Public Archive is provided as a downloadable file through the ICEYE website, showing the locations and time of imaging for each thumbnail in the Archive. After downloading the file, users can open it with their Geographic Information System (GIS) program of choice, such as Google Earth Pro or QGIS, making exploring the world of radar satellite imaging accessible for all.

- “Every day, ICEYE provides unique access to data and information for our customers that hasn’t been available before,” said Steve Young, Vice President, Business Development and Sales, ICEYE. “Our customers and the global community of Earth observation data explorers now have access to some of the imagery that has been collected in the prior years by ICEYE's SAR satellite constellation. The ICEYE Public Archive provides additional inspiration for what can be achieved in the future.”
- The ICEYE Public Archive is available to download today. The Public Archive does not contain the full catalog of ICEYE imagery, as customer exclusivity applies in many cases. The ICEYE SAR data associated with the preview images presented in the Public Archive can be ordered in the ICEYE standard image formats by following the order process described in the ICEYE Product Guide. ICEYE sales will assist new customers to set up an account for image orders.


• July 8, 2020: The Finnish space company ICEYE is providing its SAR satellite data for assessment via ESA’s Earthnet Third Party Mission (TPM). Through this program, ESA sponsors the cost to access ICEYE’s SAR data for research and Earth Observation (EO) based application development. 52)
- “We are very proud to begin distributing SAR data to the international user community through ESA’s Earthnet Third Party Mission.”, said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “ICEYE has always aimed for providing wide and easy access to its SAR data, and this is an excellent step forward in that. ESA’s Earthnet program and the TPM framework is a phenomenal tool for data users that shows the value of European collaboration.”
- The Earthnet Third Party Mission is an ESA framework that enables the collection and distribution of data from non-ESA satellite missions free-of-charge for international Principal Investigators. ESA allows the data to be used for research and applications development including preparation of future operational use. Furthermore, ESA utilizes third party satellite data to supplement its own internal projects.
- Giuseppe Ottavianelli, ESA TPM Mission Manager: “ESA will facilitate the ICEYE data assessment through a dedicated Announcement of Opportunity process which is open to all international Principal Investigators. In the future, ESA also plans to implement specific studies on various application topics. With the upcoming launch, the importance of ICEYE imagery in the EO Research and Development community will certainly grow by enabling new operational EO based services.”
- The Announcement of Opportunity (AO) process requires the submission of a project proposal. All information is available on ESA’s AO webpage for ICEYE data.
- Roberto Biasutti, ESA TPM Operational Manager: "ICEYE's constantly growing SAR satellite constellation represents a milestone in the radar Earth observation industry. It is of great importance for our Principal Investigators to explore the potential of ICEYE data. ESA is delighted to support this process."
- In the framework of the TPM program, ESA and its members aim to establish dialogs with the various mission providers and to promote global cooperation between space agencies and companies to make resources and knowledge widely available to the EO community. The TPM activity has been in effect for more than 40 years and is funded under ESA’s Earthnet program.
• May 6, 2020: With an actively maintained 18-day repeat ground track worldwide, ICEYE has demonstrated a new radar satellite imaging capability from its current radar satellite constellation. ICEYE’s interferometric SAR capability is used for change detection measured in millimeters. 53)
- Finnish New Space leader ICEYE is the first in the world to demonstrate interferometric capabilities from SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites under 100 kg in mass. With an actively maintained 18-day ground track revisit cycle, ICEYE is now able to produce a further capability that was previously only available from larger, conventional SAR satellites. Interferometry is made available to ICEYE customers later in 2020.
- SAR interferometry is used to detect millimeter-scale surface movements in vertical direction between two or more SAR images. These height differences are analyzed using maps called interferograms, which are the basis for creating Digital Elevation Models (DEM). Interferograms are also used for monitoring oil exploration activities, ongoing underground constructions, ensuring the safety of mining activities, and analyzing ground deformations after earthquakes, among other uses.


- Coherence, a correlation between two SAR images, is a valuable source for detailed change detection analysis, land cover classification, analyzing infrastructure, flood monitoring, and more.
- ICEYE is in a unique position in the world, as its small SAR satellites are maneuvered with electric propulsion, which enables the exact maintained satellite orbits that are necessary for interferometry. The integrated propulsion solutions and technical support provided by ICEYE’s key partner ENPULSION - with additional collaboration from the European Space Agency - have been instrumental for ICEYE in achieving the desired outcomes in this capability demonstration.
- “Generating interferometric information from the world’s smallest SAR satellites is revolutionary.”, said Steve Young, Vice President, Business Development and Sales, ICEYE. “This will enable our customers to perform change detection measured in millimeters, and to utilize SAR satellite based 3D data from their locations of interest.”
- ICEYE’s interferometric data will be provided to customers later in 2020. Interferometry will be made available in high detail from Spotlight images, and for wider areas from Stripmap data. Once commercially available, ICEYE's standard product formats for interferometry will be accessible with standard Geographic Information System (GIS) tools.
• March 26, 2020: With an in-orbit demonstration from ICEYE radar imaging satellites, the company's data achieves the finest resolution class in commercial SAR. The company continues with its consistent track-record of delivering reliable and timely SAR satellite data to the Earth observation market, while overcoming another world-first feat from very small SAR satellites. 54)
- Finnish New Space leader ICEYE unveiled today its latest capability of 25 cm resolution imaging with SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) small satellites, utilizing the company’s current commercial SAR satellite constellation in-orbit. With this very high resolution imaging capability, ICEYE SAR data achieves the same resolution class provided by larger, conventional commercial SAR satellites operating at their highest performance.

- ICEYE successfully launched its first SAR satellite in January 2018, ICEYE-X1, which achieved 10 x 10 meter resolution data capabilities, while also becoming the World's first SAR satellite mission under 100 kg in launch mass. With the company's latest development of 25 cm imaging from its current commercial SAR satellite constellation of 3 spacecraft, ICEYE data achieves the finest classification of resolution in the commercial SAR market.
- “Before, these resolutions have been exclusively reserved for the larger, traditional SAR spacecraft,” said Pekka Laurila, CSO & Co-founder, ICEYE. “This resolution is operationally expected to be available for ICEYE customers already mid-2020 from the current in-orbit constellation.”
- Following standard industry definitions, the native slant plane resolution of the newly unveiled SAR data is 25 cm in the azimuth direction, and 50 cm in the range direction, before ground-plane adjustments are applied. The finest resolution data will be provided to customers in ICEYE's standard product formats that are accessible with standard Geographic Information System (GIS) tools.
• March 9, 2020: ICEYE continues to lead the way for synthetic-aperture radar satellite technologies, now with a newly unveiled in-orbit demonstration for analyzing movement from the company’s SAR data. 55)
- Finnish New Space leader ICEYE unveiled its newest in-orbit satellite demonstration, the capability to create SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) videos from the company’s current SAR satellite constellation, during Satellite 2020 in Washington, DC. ICEYE’s innovative imaging and processing technique for generating SAR videos can be used for advanced analysis of movement from a single satellite pass. This in-orbit demonstration opens new use cases for data users, while validating once more the forerunner status of ICEYE in SAR satellite technology.
- Generating SAR video data from ICEYE SAR satellites is done by initially focusing imaging on a single precise location for 20 seconds or more during an individual satellite pass. The acquired data is then processed into several high-resolution frames from that period, rather than into a single image. ICEYE has developed the techniques involved by utilizing its own satellite hardware and processing software.
- “The capability to generate SAR videos from a single satellite pass is an exciting feature for advanced radar image analysis of movement,” said Pekka Laurila, CSO & Co-founder, ICEYE. “We’re proud to be delivering significant amounts of standardized SAR data from orbit right now, and a big part of our commitment to our global clients is to continue to develop new capabilities that they can benefit from.”
- As a technical demonstration of the new capability, ICEYE published a collection of several ICEYE SAR video acquisitions, featuring a port in Busan, the Heathrow Airport, Las Vegas, the Bingham Canyon mine, and Tokyo. Locations are listed in the order of appearance. In these SAR videos, movement can be detected in the form of a vessel maneuvering near a port, airplanes moving at an airport, and trucks moving along a road. In addition, the videos show how large buildings in cities reflect radio waves from different imaging angles, as the satellite passes over the area.
- “SAR video data is helpful in guiding analysts to moving objects for deeper technical analysis. The video previews that ICEYE creates from the acquired data are helpful for visually communicating analytical results – forming a more complete suite of tools for the analysts and decision makers.”, said Dr. Mark Matossian, CEO of the US subsidiary of ICEYE. “The market for advanced image analysis continues to grow, as new capabilities are introduced - along with new satellite units. With roughly 20% of the world’s commercial SAR satellite units in orbit right now, ICEYE has shown to be in its own league in swift SAR satellite development.”
• February 13, 2020: ICEYE, the Finnish radar satellite operator, opened a U.S. office in the San Francisco Bay Area led by Mark Matossian, who managed a series of aerospace programs at Google including the Earth-imaging venture Terra Bella. 56)
- “The U.S. is a very big market and a top priority for ICEYE,” Rafal Modrzewski, ICEYE CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews. “We have a large set of customer-partners operating in that market. We want to make sure they get the best possible service.”
- Since launching the first small commercial synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite in 2018, ICEYE has established a constellation of three microsatellites to provide a range of products to defense and intelligence organizations, civil government agencies and commercial customers.
- The firm’s U.S. customers and partners include satellite data and analytics firms Ursa Space of Ithaca, New York, R2Space of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and RS Metrics of Stamford, Connecticut, as well as ExxonMobil, the multinational corporation based in Irving, Texas.
- “We want an office dedicated to U.S. customers and are contemplating a variety of options including establishing a full manufacturing chain in the U.S. as we hear from some customers that may be a requirement or may be helpful to them,” Modrzewski said. “Almost all of the applications we have on our roadmap are in demand by U.S. customers.”
- Matossian, who earned a PhD in operations research and optimization from the University of Colorado, Boulder, before working on the Strategic Defense Initiative and a 1990s broadband telecommunications constellation, said he considered many business ventures before joining ICEYE.
- “Terra Bella was electrooptical imaging,” Matossian said. “When I looked at what the customers wanted, a lot of it came down to understanding precise geometry and change detection, things that are far better with synthetic-aperture radar than with electrooptical imagery. The accepted wisdom in the industry at the time was that radar satellites were too expensive and their power requirements were too large for an innovative NewSpace venture to operate them.”
- Since that is no longer the accepted wisdom, companies around the world are raising money and building satellites to create additional SAR constellations including San Francisco-based Capella Space, Umbra Lab of Santa Barbara, California, and Synspective of Tokyo.
- In addition to proving small SAR is possible, ICEYE is operating a constellation that offers imagery at “such a compelling price-point that it opens doors,” Matossian said. “I think it will actually start steering the remote sensing market toward SAR and that SAR as a category will grow because of ICEYE.”
- From ICEYE's perspective, Matossian is the right person to lead ICEYE U.S. because of his education and experience, Modrzewski said. “He did a very similar thing in the past when Google acquired SkyBox and converted it into Terra Bella. Mark was in charge of operations. He knows the industry, he knows the market and he cares about customers as much as we do.”
• January 20, 2020: ICEYE announced today the launch of its global Dark Vessel Detection solution for governmental maritime security customers. The unique solution combines SAR satellite data from ICEYE, and AIS (Automatic Identification System) data from vessels. Dark Vessel Detection is used as a source of actionable information for governments monitoring their EEZs (Exclusive Economic Zones), day and night, and even through cloud cover. 57)
- ICEYE offers its dark vessel detection solution now in a standardized data product format for maritime security authorities around the world. With the company’s growing radar imaging satellite constellation, delivery timelines for new data continue to shrink.
- “Dark Vessel Detection offered by ICEYE is built for governments around the world for improving the maritime safety of their regions,” said Steve Young, Vice President, Business Development and Sales, ICEYE. “This unique solution enables authorities to take action based on reliable information. Data users can improve their enforcement activities against illegal transshipments of goods, help them in addressing illegal fishing, and assist in curbing drug and human trafficking.”
- Vessels engaged in illegal activities can choose to turn off their AIS transponders to avoid detection from authorities. ICEYE’s Dark Vessel Detection service’s core is built on the company’s own radar imaging satellite constellation data, which provides a reliable source of information at all times of the day and in all weather conditions. ICEYE’s customers have access to both location information and radar satellite images of all detectable vessels - even when they do not have their AIS transponders turned on.

• November 6, 2019: ICEYE today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with RS Metrics of Stamford CT, USA. The timely and actionable satellite SAR data and analysis will supply the "SAR Metal Signals" - a new product by RS Metrics, that will provide commodities market the world’s first global SAR-based iron ore inventories dataset with up to daily updates." 58)
- ICEYE, who recently announced the commercial availability of its high resolution satellite imaging, is uniquely positioned for SAR remote sensing of iron ore stockpiles. With a growing amount of radar imaging satellites in the ICEYE constellation, there is now a completely new view into almost the entirety of the global iron ore supply chain.
- In scope of this partnership, ICEYE will provide multi-angle SAR imaging and associated iron ore stockpile analysis to RS Metrics. In turn, RS Metrics will provide its users visibility into supply chain disruptions, regional and global trends, as well as iron ore inventories information that is valuable in predicting commodities and dry bulk price fluctuations.

• October 16, 2019: ICEYE today announced that its recently developed Spotlight imaging mode, which enables 1-meter radar imaging resolution from the company’s satellite constellation, is now commercially available to its customers around the world. ICEYE Spotlight imaging is purpose-built to achieve a high resolution that supports a variety of use cases for both commercial and government customers. 59)
- The successful deployment of Spotlight imaging for commercial customers is a major milestone for ICEYE, as well as a technological achievement. There are very few comparable services available worldwide, and ICEYE is currently the only organization in the world to provide this capability as a commercial service from such small SAR microsatellites. High resolution radar imagery is especially useful for distinguishing between small objects, and in helping data users classify larger objects with more certainty. 1-meter Spotlight radar imagery is particularly useful in detailed volume monitoring of stockpiles, vehicle count monitoring, property damage estimation, and oil transshipment monitoring.
- “The commodities sector is an early example where the availability of high-resolution SAR imaging can have dramatic impacts,” said Pekka Laurila, CSO and co-founder of ICEYE. “It is now possible to track specific locations, often, with high reliability, and at an incredible level of detail. The potential benefits for our early users are immense, as the competitive edge our data provides is still very fresh in the market.”
- “ICEYE and our partners are in a unique position in the world with this new commercial availability of high-resolution radar satellite data,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “I am proud of our team, who are helping our customers and partners to solve some of the incredibly hard challenges the world faces – both globally and locally.”
- ICEYE was the first organization in the world to technologically achieve under 1-meter resolution imagery from SAR satellites under 100 kg in mass. The latest two ICEYE SAR Satellites were launched in July 2019. The company continues to grow its commercially available SAR satellite constellation with additional satellite launches at an increasing pace.

• September 25 2019: ICEYE and KSAT have signed an extended cooperation agreement to provide Near Real-Time radar satellite imagery and data analysis at high speeds to customers. 60)
- ICEYE and KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) today announced they have signed an extended cooperation agreement on providing Near Real-Time (NRT) SAR data services for government and commercial customers. The newly signed contract covers further data purchases and extended operations of ICEYE’s Near Real-Time SAR processor within the KSAT Ground Network, resulting in an extremely fast delivery chain for data and value-added products for customers.
- The collaborative solution between KSAT and ICEYE enables streaming satellite data directly to the ICEYE SAR processor running on the KSAT local infrastructure. This unique setup enables information extraction immediately from the arrival of the first data bytes of satellite data, resulting in delivery times of vessel detection results in less than 15 minutes.

- KSAT has installed the ICEYE SAR processor for direct downlink capabilities, offering customers an unparalleled access to ICEYE SAR satellite constellation data. The KSAT stream currently supports the current ICEYE SAR satellite constellation of 3 satellite units, and the new system architecture is designed to handle increasing volumes of data from the growing ICEYE SAR satellite constellation.
• September 12, 2019: ICEYE’s Two Newest SAR Satellites, Launched in July 2019, Have Finished Their Initial Commissioning, and Have Been Added to ICEYE’s Commercial SAR Constellation. 61)
- ICEYE announced today its two SAR satellites launched in July 2019 have finalized their initial commissioning, and are available for customer data orders. The company now provides standardized commercial imaging access to three of its SAR satellite units, in addition to serving a number of customers with custom data products and solutions. ICEYE is set to launch two more SAR satellite units by the end of 2019 to further increase the commercial availability and coverage of the globe with the company’s constellation.
- The initial commissioning phase for these two ICEYE SAR satellites has been finalized, and standard SAR data access is available for commercial and government customers. ICEYE has recently published radar imaging with its newly developed Spotlight mode - imagery at very high resolutions.
- ICEYE is simultaneously publicizing images that have been acquired with both new SAR satellite units, taken only minutes apart from each other, to demonstrate change detection capabilities the company is developing. ICEYE intends to grow its SAR satellite constellation to cover the globe with very frequent imaging, with an average of only hours between imaging opportunities for individual locations.

- “The capacity of these two SAR satellites helps us increase our revisit rates for individual locations, which further ensures our customers don’t have to wait for imaging,” said Pekka Laurila, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of ICEYE. “With this dramatic increase in imaging capacity, we are able to also serve segments such as the insurance and energy industries with tailored information solutions that bring more direct value towards their needs.”
• August 9, 2019: Under 1-meter resolution radar satellite imaging from ICEYE breaks previous technological barriers for small SAR satellites. ICEYE is the first in the world to achieve better-than 1 meter resolution imagery from under 100 kg SAR satellites. The new Spotlight imaging capability builds on ICEYE’s legacy of leading the way on small satellite SAR since its history-making first small SAR satellite launch in January 2018. Since then the company has continued to launch more satellites, latest in July 2019 with two new units. With new satellites being launched still during 2019, ICEYE continues to develop and optimize its imaging capabilities further for customers in both commercial and government segments. 62)
- “Offering satellite imagery day and night, regardless of cloud cover, and at these very high resolutions, makes small SAR the new standard for reliable and timely imaging,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “The imagery we’ve released today shows that the previously perceived limits of small satellite SAR continue to be solved by our extremely talented teams at ICEYE.”

• July 5, 2019: ICEYE today confirmed that the simultaneous launch of two new ICEYE SAR satellites has been successful. The satellites were launched on a rideshare mission of Roscosmos managed by Exolaunch, a Berlin-based company, on July 05 2019 at 05:41 UTC. Communications with both SAR satellites have been established, and the procedure for commissioning both units for commercially available radar imaging has begun. With these units, ICEYE continues to grow its in-orbit capacity that is currently available for both government and commercial SAR data users. 63)
• June 7, 2019: ICEYE and KSAT announce joint offering on direct downlink capabilities for ICEYE constellation to push the boundaries of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) image delivery timelines. 64)
- ICEYE, the leader in small SAR satellite technology, currently providing commercial imaging with the ICEYE-X2 satellite, and Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), announced today their joint offering of full SAR Ground Segment services to ICEYE SAR satellite constellation customers. This collaborative service enables timelines as short as 15 minutes from image acquisition to processed SAR image delivery for government customers globally.
- “We are excited to be working with ICEYE to provide our customers enhanced capabilities in SAR imaging,” said Jan Petter Pedersen, Senior Vice President at KSAT. “The timelines involved in rapid imaging, downlinking and processing require new types of solutions. The combined SAR Ground Segment of ICEYE and KSAT is here to change the way customers think about the timeliness of the data they can use.”
- The current market capabilities and timelines for gaining access to commercial SAR imagery can easily vary from several hours to several days, if not weeks, for the complete chain of delivery. For many use cases such long timelines are prohibitive, as the imagery would then be too old by the time it is received for it to be useful. There has long existed a need to shrink these timelines to be closer to instantaneous, but due to the way SAR imaging and processing is performed, it has been difficult to attain globally. ICEYE and KSAT’s joint SAR Ground Segment offering enables access to a new level of service quality for SAR users worldwide.
- KSAT is the first ICEYE partner that has installed the newly developed ICEYE SAR processor for direct downlink capabilities, gaining the ability to offer its customers an unparalleled access to ICEYE SAR satellite constellation data. KSAT is developing new ground station capabilities and expanding their ground station network globally.
- “ICEYE is proud to continue to break the boundaries of what’s possible with its proprietary SAR technology” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “Working with KSAT has enabled us to provide even better services for our customers. The next step for ICEYE is to enable direct tasking of its commercially available constellation, providing users with even better capabilities.”
- KSAT is the leading provider of communication services for spacecraft and launch vehicles from their uniquely located global ground network. KSAT’s network today spans over 180 antennas at 21 sites across the globe (including Pole to Pole coverage from Antarctica to the Arctic), and is constantly expanding. KSAT is proud to be the behind-the-scenes bridge back to Earth, supporting the vast majority of space companies, agencies, and start-ups. Furthermore, KSAT provides a variety of products derived from both SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and high-resolution optical satellite data. The key focus is maritime situational awareness, which includes NRT (Near Real-Time) vessel detection and oil spill monitoring, ice monitoring and other related services.

• July 05, 2019: Communications with both SAR satellites, ICEYE-X4 and ICEYE-X5, have been established, and the procedure for commissioning both units for commercially available radar imaging has begun. With these units, ICEYE continues to grow its in-orbit capacity that is currently available for both government and commercial SAR data users (Ref. 7).
- ”ICEYE’s SAR satellites don’t take years to develop and launch. We are on a faster time scale to serve data to our partners. I'm very proud of our team,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE. “Both government and commercial customers have access to a growing SAR satellite capacity from ICEYE. We’re well on our way to providing imaging from these two new units, and we look forward to our upcoming launches still scheduled for later this year.”
• May 15, 2019: APSI (Asia Pacific Satellite Inc.) of Seoul, Korea and ICEYE, the global leader in small satellite SAR technology, announced today that the organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding about working together to support the South Korean New Space market. As a part of the agreement, APSI will supply ICEYE's SAR imagery in South Korea and also provides mutual support from both APSI and ICEYE to deliver radar imaging related satellite solutions for the South Korean market. 65)
- ICEYE is providing commercial data services to both government and industry users. The company is actively increasing the size of its SAR satellite constellation, with up to five more satellites being launched throughout 2019. ICEYE's small SAR satellites can be manufactured and launched cost-effectively, providing up to 1-meter resolution SAR images.
- APSI is a provider of equipment and services for multiple government programs in South Korea, and with the support of ICEYE’s leading technology, will grow to provide further data, hardware and radar imaging solutions to the governmental and commercial customers in South Korea.


• January 22, 2019: Unrivaled new satellite data combats illegal fishing and transshipment in EEZs (Exclusive Economic Zones). 66)
ICEYE, the leader in SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) technology for microsatellites, and Spire Global Inc, the world’s largest space-to-cloud analytics company, announced today a new collaborative technology to enable the detection of dark vessels and illegal activities at sea. This new service offering will give both ICEYE and Spire’s users a completely new satellite capability to assist in the detection and elimination of illegal fishing. The new product will assist in the detection of illegal transshipment and enable countries with a never before available level of visibility and awareness of vessels within exclusive economic zones. This new solution will also greatly reduce security threats and provide the industry a new way to monitor maritime trafficking.

- In addition to detecting dark vessels, this technology partnership will allow users a new level of accuracy in tracking vessels involved in trafficking of everything from arms, drugs, commodities, and people that want to avoid being seen. With the economic value of illegal fishing estimated to be up to 23B USD annually, this solution was developed to directly address this combination of economic, environmental, human rights, and industry-wide security issues.
- “We are constantly seeking partnerships that complete ICEYE’s near real-time satellite monitoring capability and help us create new services for our customers. To that end, we’re thrilled to work with Spire as it has become an industry leader with its approach in the development of its nanosatellite constellation,” said Pekka Laurila, CSO, and Co-Founder, ICEYE. “This alliance will provide more businesses and governments with a new and increased ability to monitor maritime traffic, including vessels that want to avoid detection.”
- The service will tap into Spire’s Satellite AIS (Automatic Identification System), which is currently used for continuous monitoring of vessels around the globe, in tandem with ICEYE’s satellite-based synthetic aperture radar imaging, which was designed to see dark vessels when they don’t report on their activity. Spire will utilize ICEYE’s unique ability to provide reliable, high revisit rates for radar satellite imaging, multiple times each day from anywhere on Earth, with imaging that functions through clouds at any time of day. This will allow both Spire and ICEYE to produce and provide a new data set of more substantial information at revisit rates never before possible.

- Argentina has been suffering from an increase in illegal squid fishing within its EEZ - the squid stocks are depleting and the available catch are decreasing in size. There have been incidents where the Argentine Coast Guard has had to take reactive actions against illegal vessels. This new dark vessel monitoring service from ICEYE and Spire brings systematic monitoring for cases such as this.
- “Data fusion holds an enormous potential impact for our world. By combining data sets like AIS and SAR, we gain previously unrealized insights in the movement of goods and people around the globe. Our relationship with ICEYE means that never before available tools will suddenly be an actionable resource to those committed to securing our oceans.” said John Lusk, General Manager, Spire Maritime.
- Spire Global Inc. of San Francisco has become an industry standard for data collection in the commercial aerospace sector and operates one of the largest constellations of private nanosatellites and ground station networks in the world. The company has also launched strategic partnerships across a myriad of verticals including deals with NASA, ESA and key players in the weather, maritime and aviation sectors.

• On December 11, 2018, ICEYE published its first radar image from the ICEYE-X2 satellite, launched on Spaceflight’s historic SSO-A mission last week. The image is of Natural Parks Aralar and Aizkorri-Aratz, Spain on December 7, 2018, taken only 4 days after launch. ICEYE-X2 was successfully launched on December 3, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 67)
- “Our remarkable team is committed to keep delivering world-leading radar imaging satellites to help others make more informed decisions. We are ecstatic to have had not one but two groundbreaking missions this year,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “Is it incredibly hard to develop small SAR satellites at such a fast pace? Absolutely. Is it impossible? The achievements of our team speak for themselves.”

• December 3, 2018: Launch of ICEYE-X2 on Spaceflight’s SSO-A: SmallSat Express mission makes history as first ever Finnish-Polish satellite. 68)
- ICEYE confirmed that the launch of its satellite mission ICEYE-X2 has been successful. Communications with the satellite were successfully established at 19:58 CET, after the satellite was delivered into orbit via Spaceflight’s SSO-A: SmallSat Express mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
- Now in a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit, ICEYE-X2 is being commissioned for radar imaging. Launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the launch represents ICEYE’s second satellite successfully placed into orbit within one year and marks a crucial step towards the company’s goal of creating the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation by the end of 2019.
- “If it weren’t for the incredible hard work of our teams, as well as the continued support from our investors and advisors, we would not be where we are today,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “Although there’s always challenging work to be done, we are extremely proud of the progress we’ve made within just one year. We’re excited for what is to come in the near future and look forward to pushing the boundaries of what is possible even further.”
- Building upon ICEYE’s successful first mission ICEYE-X1, ICEYE-X2 has greatly increased in-orbit performance over its predecessor. These advancements include a significantly improved imaging resolution and the addition of propulsion for orbital adjustments, among others. The ICEYE-X2 satellite mission is aiming for further improvements in ICEYE’s SAR imaging technology, and for the active delivery of SAR satellite imagery to initial customers.
- Launched in January 2018 on-board India’s PSLV-C40 rocket, ICEYE-X1 was the world’s first SAR satellite under 100 kg placed into orbit. ICEYE-X1 successfully collected more than 600 images throughout its mission. By the end of 2019, ICEYE is on track to launch a total of 8 additional satellites.
References
1) ”ICEYE-X2 - Continuous Advancements in Small Satellite SAR,” ICEYE, 2020, URL: https://www.iceye.com/resources/missions/iceye-x2
2) ”ICEYE SAR Product Guide,” Version 2.0, Released 14 August 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/hubfs/Downloadables/ICEYE-SAR-Product-Guide-2019.pdf
3) Stephen Clark, ”Spaceflight’s 64-satellite rideshare mission set to last five hours,” Spaceflight Now, 3 December 2018, URL: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/12/03/spaceflights-64-satellite-rideshare-mission-set-to-last-five-hours/
4) Stephen Clark, ”Spaceflight preps for first launch of unique orbiting satellite deployers,” Spaceflight Now, 23 August 2018, URL: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/08/23/spaceflight-preps-for-first-launch-of-unique-orbiting-satellite-deployers/
5) Jeff Foust, ”Spaceflight gears up for dedicated Falcon 9 launch,” Space News, 6 August 2018, URL: https://spacenews.com/spaceflight-gears-up-for-dedicated-falcon-9-launch/t).
6) ”Spaceflight - Introducing SSO-A: The smallsat express,” Spaceflight, 3 December 2018, URL: http://spaceflight.com/sso-a/
7) ”ICEYE Reports Successful July 2019 Launch of Two SAR Satellites,” ICEYE, 5 July 20019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-reports-successful-july-2019-launch-of-two-sar-satellites
8) Anatoly Zak, ”Soyuz launches fresh Meteor weather watcher and 32 small satellites,” Russian Space Web, 5 July 2019, URL: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/meteor-m2-2.html
9) Anatoly Zak, ”Soyuz delivers its first Gonets-M satellites,” Russian Spaceweb, 28 September 2020, URL: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/gonets-block16.html
10) ”Exolaunch to Deliver the NetSat constellation into Orbit for Würzburg Center for Telematics,” Exolaunch, 15 September 2020, URL: https://www.exolaunch.com/news-block-17.html
11) ”Exolaunch and Glavkosmos announce Soyuz launch campaign for 15 small satellites,” Exolaunch, 17 August 2020, URL: https://www.exolaunch.com/news-block-14.html
12) ”Exolaunch Delivers 15 Small Satellites into Orbit on a Soyuz Rideshare Mission, Deploys 100th Payload into Space,” Exolaunch, 28 September 2020, URL: https://www.exolaunch.com/news-block-19.html
13) ”UK Space Agency: Take-off for UK-built supercomputer nanosatellites,” WiredGov, 29 September 2020, URL: https://www.wired-gov.net/wg/news.nsf/articles/UK+Space+Agency+Takeoff+for+UKbuilt+supercomputer+nanosatellites+29092020154300?open
14) ”ICEYE Establishes World's Top-Performing Persistent Monitoring Satellite Capabilities with Three New SAR Spacecraft Successfully Launched,” ICEYE Press Release, 25 January 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-establishes-worlds-top-performing-persistent-monitoring-satellite-capabilities-with-three-new-sar-spacecraft-successfully-launched?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=108007477&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_94ASTpvgB3Y3JKDGHIdrpQMvs_pc8oDhh96kIPBM9pRqlJ3Fecf57VCOLBv1qB3ByCRcgp2szYnGVm6d90Z0kXik2Hw&utm_content=108007477&utm_source=hs_email
15) ”ICEYE Launches Four New Radar Imaging Satellites, Taking a Further Leap Forward in Persistent Monitoring Capabilities,” ICEYE Press Release, 01 July 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-launches-four-new-radar-imaging-satellites-taking-a-further-leap-forward-in-persistent-monitoring-capabilities
16) ”Transporter-3 Mission,” SpaceX, 13 January 2022, URL: https://www.spacex.com/launches/
17) Jeff Foust, ”SpaceX launches third dedicated smallsat rideshare mission,” SpaceNews, 13 January 2022, URL: https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-third-dedicated-smallsat-rideshare-mission/
18) ”ICEYE Expands World's Largest SAR Satellite Constellation; launches first U.S. built spacecraft,” ICEYE Press Release, 13 January 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/yc4xhzf6
19) ”ICEYE successfully completes its largest satellite launch ever, placing five new SAR satellites into orbit,” ICEYE Press Release, 25 May 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/2payfpc5
20) ”ICEYE Supports Insurance Industry and UNDP-led Initiative to Increase Flood Resilience in Ghana,” ICEYE Press Release, 14, July 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/535krpue
21) ”ICEYE Launches Geospatial Analysis Platform To Provide Insurers with Instant Flood Impact Analysis,” ICEYE Press Release, 29 June 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/8xvbxwpx
22) ”Arturo and ICEYE Team Up to Bring Insurers Near Real-Time Flood and Property Damage Insights,” ICEYE Press Release, 25 May 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/5a7kb8p2
23) ”ICEYE Announces Agreement with European Space Agency to Support Copernicus Emergency Services with Flood Insights,” ICEYE Press Release, 23 May 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/4zfsxtwu
24) ”Neptune Flood and ICEYE Enter Strategic Collaboration on Flood Insights,” ICEYE Press Release, 9 May 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/44p4dse5
25) ”EigenRisk® Adds ICEYE's Flood Insights to Its Global Catastrophe Risk Management Platform,” ICEYE Press Release, 20 April 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/49ym6r8r
26) ”ICEYE and Fermat Capital Management Enter Strategic Alliance,” ICEYE Press Release, 15 March 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/2dps4xkp
27) ”ICEYE Named to Fast Company’s Annual List of World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2022,” ICEYE Press Release, 8 March 2022, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-named-to-fast-companys-annual-list-of-worlds-most-innovative-companies-for-2022
28) ”Tokio Marine and ICEYE Announce Strategic Investment and Commercial Collaboration,” ICEYE Press Release, 8 January 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/y8mzns96
29) ”ICEYE Raises USD 136M in Series D Funding Round,” ICEYE Press Release, 3 February 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/5wtuby2k
30) ”ICEYE US Wins Contract To Participate in National Reconnaissance Office’s Broad Agency Announcement For Commercial Radar,” ICEYE Press Release, 20 January 2022, URL: https://tinyurl.com/bddztzvf
31) ”MDA and ICEYE Sign Agreement to Integrate X-band SAR Satellite Into MDA’s CHORUS™ Constellation,” ICEYE Press Release, 15 December 2021, URL: https://tinyurl.com/bdhrnbpx
32) ”ICEYE Opens New Office and Machine Learning Center of Excellence in Luxembourg,” ICEYE Press Release, 02 December 2021, URL: https://tinyurl.com/ym4s3jmu
33) ”ICEYE and U.S. Army to Pursue Collaborative Research and Development,” ICEYE Press Release, 18 November 2021, URL: https://tinyurl.com/cn4h5r5u
34) ”G42 and ICEYE Sign a Memorandum of Understanding to Collaborate and Develop Advanced SAR Products,” ICEYE Press Release, 17 November 2021, URL: https://tinyurl.com/kfjd9384
35) ”Aon and ICEYE Launch Solution to Better Manage Climate Risks in Japan,” ICEYE Press Release, 17 November 2021, URL: https://tinyurl.com/a9wjkwc4
36) ”ICEYE Announces Flood Hazard Analysis Agreement With McKenzie Intelligence Services,” ICEYE Press Release, 10 November 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-announces-flood-hazard-analysis-agreement-with-mckenzie-intelligence-services
37) ”ICEYE Announces Contract with NOAA to Tackle Environmental Hazards Often Linked to Climate Change,” ICEYE Press Release, 04 November 2021: URL: https://tinyurl.com/f75f6c6v
38) ”Descartes Underwriting and ICEYE Announce Partnership to Propel Parametric Insurance Product Design with Advanced Flood Observation Technology,” ICEYE Press Release, 20 Oct. 2021, URL: https://tinyurl.com/3mjz87rt
39) ”ICEYE commercial satellites join the EU Copernicus program,” ESA Applications, 12 October 2021, URL: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/ICEYE_commercial_satellites_join_the_EU_Copernicus_programme
40) ”ICEYE Named as a Contributing Mission to Europe’s Copernicus Satellite Imaging Program,” ICEYE Press Release, 12 October 2021, URL: https://is.gd/HeTw5Q
41) ”ICEYE Accelerates Growth In the Insurance Segment with Appointment of Global Head of Insurance Solutions,” ICEYE Press Release, 07 October 2021, URL: https://is.gd/KK4SsX
42) ”ICEYE First in the World to Achieve Revolutionary Daily Coherent Ground Track Repeat,” ICEYE Press Release, 6 July 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-first-in-the-world-to-achieve-revolutionary-daily-coherent-ground-track-repeat
43) ”ICEYE Expands Satellite Offering in Japan, Makoto Higashi Joins as General Manager for Local Business Operations,” ICEYE Press Release, 23 June 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-expands-satellite-offering-in-japan-makoto-higashi-joins-as-general-manager-for-local-business-operations
44) ”ICEYE Approved as Full ESA Earthnet Third Party Mission - The Program Opens Access to ICEYE SAR Data for Researchers and Developers,” ICEYE Press Release, 10 June 2021, https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-approved-as-full-esa-earthnet-third-party-mission-the-programme-opens-access-to-iceye-sar-data-for-researchers-and-developers
45) ”ICEYE Introduces the World’s First Wide Area Imaging for Persistent Monitoring with New Space SAR Satellites,” ICEYE Press Release, 10 May 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-introduces-the-worlds-first-wide-area-imaging-for-persistent-monitoring-with-new-space-sar-satellites
46) ”ICEYE Opens New Spacecraft Production Facility in Irvine, California, Expands U.S. Manufacturing, Research and Customer Operations,” ICEYE Press Release, 15 April 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-opens-new-spacecraft-production-facility-in-irvine-california-expands-us-manufacturing-research-and-customer-operations
47) ”ICEYE Reports Contracts Valued at $50M in 2020 and Announces New Launches to Meet Growing Demand,” ICEYE Press Release, 31 March 2021, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-reports-contracts-valued-at-50m-usd-in-2020-and-announces-new-launches-to-meet-growing-demand
48) ”ICEYE Enters Into A Strategic Partnership With Swiss Re Advancing Natural Catastrophe Services With Radar Satellite-Based Flood Monitoring,” ICEYE Press Release, 02 March 2021, URL: https://is.gd/kr7sai
49) ”ICEYE’s 3 Newest Satellites From Late January Launch Return First Radar Images,”ICEYE Press Release, 25 February 2021, URL: https://is.gd/FmEWos
50) ”NGA wants faster access to commercial geospatial data,” SpaceNews, 12 January 2021, URL: https://spacenews.com/nga-wants-faster-access-to-commercial-geospatial-data/
51) ”ICEYE Shares Nearly 18,000 Satellite Image Catalog Under Creative Commons License,” ICEYE Press Release, 13 October 2020, URL: https://tinyurl.com/y37mgl8r
52) ”ICEYE SAR Satellite Imagery Available Through the ESA Earthnet Third Party Mission,” ICEYE Press Release, 08 July 2020, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-sar-satellite-imagery-available-through-the-esa-earthnet-third-party-mission
53) ”SAR Interferometry Demonstrated with an 18-day Global Repeat by ICEYE,” ICEYE Press Release, 6 May 2020, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/sar-interferometry-demonstrated-with-an-18-day-global-repeat-by-iceye
54) ”ICEYE Unveils 25 cm SAR Imaging Capability with Current SAR Satellite Constellation,” ICEYE Press Release, 26 March 2020, URL: https://tinyurl.com/yx3x7lvv
55) ”ICEYE Demonstrates SAR Video Capability from Current SAR Satellite Constellation,” ICEYE Press Release, 09 March 2020, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-demonstrates-sar-video-capability-from-current-sar-satellite-constellation
56) Debra Werner, ”Iceye establishes U.S. office, considers U.S. manufacturing,” SpaceNews, 13 February 2020, URL: https://spacenews.com/iceye-us-opens/
57) ”ICEYE Dark Vessel Detection Now Globally Available for Government Organizations,” ICEYE Press Release, 20 January 2020, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-dark-vessel-detection-now-globally-available-for-government-organizations
58) ”ICEYE and RS Metrics Enter Into Agreement to Provide Unmatched Global Iron Ore Stockpile Monitoring,” ICEYE Press Release, 6 November 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-and-rs-metrics-enter-into-agreement-to-provide-unmatched-global-iron-ore-stockpile-monitoring
59) ”ICEYE High-Resolution Spotlight Radar Imaging Now Commercially Available,” ICEYE Press Release, 16 October 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-high-resolution-spotlight-radar-imaging-now-commercially-available
60) ”KSAT and ICEYE Extend Partnership with More Radar Satellite Imagery and Faster Data Analysis,” ICEYE Press Release, 25 September 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/ksat-and-iceye-extend-partnership-with-more-radar-satellite-imagery-and-faster-data-analysis
61) ”Two Recently Launched ICEYE SAR Satellites Commissioned - Added to Commercial Constellation,” ICEYE Press Release, 12 September 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/two-recently-launched-iceye-sar-satellites-commissioned-added-to-commercial-constellation
62) ”ICEYE Releases World-First Under 1-Meter Resolution Radar Imagery from SAR Microsatellites,” ICEYE Press Release, 9 August 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-releases-first-under-1-meter-resolution-spotlight-radar-imagery-from-small-sar
63) ”ICEYE Reports Successful July 2019 Launch of Two SAR Satellites,” ICEYE, 5 July 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-reports-successful-july-2019-launch-of-two-sar-satellites
64) ”Breaking the 15 Minutes Barrier from Acquisition to Delivery for SAR imaging,” ICEYE Press Release, 7 June 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-ksat-announce-ground-segment-15-minute-tasking-to-processing-sar-image-capabilities
65) ”APSI and ICEYE to Provide South Korean New Space Market with SAR Imaging Solutions,” ICEYE Press Release, 15 May 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/apsi-and-iceye-to-provide-south-korean-new-space-market-with-sar-imaging-solutions
66) ”ICEYE and Spire Join Forces To Enable Global Monitoring Of Dark Vessels At Sea,” ICEYE Press Release, 22 January 2019, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/iceye-spire-join-forces-enable-global-monitoring-dark-vessels-at-sea
67) ”First Radar Image from ICEYE-X2 Published Only A Week After Launch,” ICEYE, 11 December 2018, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/first-radar-image-from-iceye-x2-published-only-a-week-after-launch
68) ”Launch Success, ICEYE-X2 SAR Satellite Communications Established,” ICEYE Press Release, 3 December 2018, URL: https://www.iceye.com/press/press-releases/launch-success-iceye-x2-sar-satellite-communications-established
The information compiled and edited in this article was provided by Herbert J. Kramer from his documentation of: ”Observation of the Earth and Its Environment: Survey of Missions and Sensors” (Springer Verlag) as well as many other sources after the publication of the 4th edition in 2002. - Comments and corrections to this article are always welcome for further updates (eoportal@symbios.space).
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