Science

UMBRA-10

SAR imaging · Umbra Space

Umbra-10 is the second of two Umbra Space synthetic aperture radar satellites launched together on SpaceX's Transporter-11 rideshare mission, August 16, 2024, joining a constellation that had put its first satellite in orbit only three years earlier. Umbra's radar can resolve details as fine as 25 centimeters in its standard commercial product and has demonstrated 16-centimeter imagery in testing—sharp enough to distinguish individual vehicles or shipping containers, and it does this at night and through clouds, weather, and smoke, conditions that ground optical satellites entirely. The company has leaned hard into openness as a differentiator: its Open Data Program has released more than a million dollars' worth of free SAR imagery, monitoring more than twenty locations worldwide for changes like deforestation, mining activity, and floating oil storage, and it distributes that data under a Creative Commons license—an approach the company calls unprecedented in an industry that typically guards its imagery closely.