Science

UMBRA-09

SAR imaging · Umbra Space

Umbra doesn't just take radar pictures of Earth—it takes some of the sharpest ones any commercial company is legally allowed to sell. Umbra-09 is a synthetic aperture radar satellite that flew up on the same August 16, 2024 Transporter-11 rideshare as its sibling Umbra-10, part of a constellation that's grown from a first launch in 2021 toward a planned 24-32 satellites. Umbra's calling card is resolution: after the U.S. government eased licensing restrictions, the company started selling imagery sharper than 25 centimeters, and in 2023 released a 16-centimeter test image, the highest-resolution shot any commercial satellite had ever put out. Because it's radar rather than an optical camera, Umbra sees straight through cloud cover, smoke, and darkness—useful for tracking flooding, monitoring military buildups, or watching a port at 3 a.m. The satellites can also operate bistatically, with one Umbra spacecraft transmitting and another receiving, which sharpens the ability to detect subtle ground movement over time. Umbra has also been picked as a data provider for NASA's Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition program.