Science

HYPERFIELD-1A

Hyperspectral Earth observation · Kuva Space

HyperField-1A is a 12-kilogram CubeSat that Finnish startup Kuva Space calls the first of a hundred satellites it eventually intends to fly, launched August 16, 2024 on SpaceX's Transporter-11 mission into sun-synchronous orbit. Its hyperspectral imager uses an in-orbit tunable Fabry-Perot interferometer—essentially a filter that can be adjusted after launch to focus on whichever slice of the light spectrum a customer needs, rather than being locked to fixed spectral bands the way most imaging satellites are. That flexibility lets one satellite serve wildly different customers: farmers checking crop health, aquaculture operators monitoring water quality, and companies tracking carbon and methane emissions can all pull different spectral information from the same hardware. Kuva Space is aiming to be a European contributor to Copernicus's hyperspectral ambitions, with HyperField-1A—still in commissioning and scanning a 31-mile swath—serving as the opening act for a constellation the company hopes will deliver sub-daily global monitoring by 2030.