Spire Global

Spire Global, Inc.
Private
Founded 2012 (2012)[1]
Founder Peter Platzer, Joel Spark, Jeroen Cappaert[1]
Headquarters San Francisco, California, U.S.
Number of locations
 3 (2015)
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Peter Platzer (CEO)
Russell Muzzolini (CTO)
[1][2]
Number of employees
 50-100[1][3]
Website spire.com

Spire Global, Inc. is an American private company specializing in data gathered from a network of small satellites.[4] It has successfully deployed twelve Earth observation CubeSats into Low Earth orbit. The company has offices in San Francisco, Glasgow, Singapore, and Boulder.

History

Spire was founded in 2012 and opened offices in San Francisco. The company later opened offices in Glasgow, Singapore, and Boulder.[4][5] The company was founded to create ArduSat, a crowd-funded satellite, which was launched on August 3, 2013.[6][7] Crowd funding in the amount of $106,330 was raised via Kickstarter.[8] The startup was incubated at Lemnos Labs[6] and investments totaling $1.5M were made in a seed round by Shasta Ventures, Emerge, Beamonte Investments, Grishin Robotics, and Lemnos Labs.[1][9] On July 29, 2014, Spire announced an additional $25M Series A funding round led by RRE Ventures and backed by Emerge, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, Qihoo, 360 Technology, and Moose Capital.[1][5][10] On June 30, 2015, the company announced a $40 Million Series B lead by Promus Ventures with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Jump Capital.[11]

The company’s first three ArduSat satellites were named after a portmanteau of Arduino, the technology on which they were based, and Satellite.[7][12] In August 2014, it was announced that Ardusat was spun out of Spire and would focus on educational technology.[2]

In September 2015, Spire became the first CubeSat operator based in the US to launch from India.[13] In January 2016, the company announced a Boulder, Colorado office and that it had hired the former program manager of the COSMIC weather satellite constellation.[14]

Satellites


Spire satellites are built to conform to the CubeSat standard. The company uses minimally adapted consumer electronics to reduce cost.[15] The satellites are placed in Low-Earth Orbit and are scheduled to be retired and replaced every two years.[16][17] The Lemur-1 satellite was launched as a prototype for a constellation of 125 satellites.[18][19][20]

The satellites are multi-sensor. Data types such as Automatic Identification System (AIS) service are used for tracking ships, and weather payloads measure temperature, pressure and precipitation. AIS data is meant for use in illegal fishing, trade monitoring, maritime domain awareness, insurance, asset tracking, search and rescue, and piracy.[6]

Satellite list

Satellite Name[21] Configuration Launch date /
Deployment date		 Launch vehicle /
Host spacecraft		 Purpose
Ardusat-1 1U CubeSat Launch: 2013-08-03
Deployment: 2013-11-19
from ISS Kibo with NanoRacks[22]		 H-IIB 304
Kounotori 4		 Public experimentation
Ardusat-X 1U CubeSat
Ardusat-2 2U CubeSat Launch: 2014-01-09
Deployment: 2014-02-28
from ISS Kibo with NanoRacks[23]		 Antares 120
Cygnus CRS Orb-1		 Public experimentation
Lemur-1 3U CubeSat 2014-06-19[24] Dnepr Prototype
Lemur-2 #1 Joel 3U CubeSat 2015-09-28[25] PSLV-XL Commercial
Lemur-2 #2 Peter
Lemur-2 #3 Jeroen
Lemur-2 #4 Chris
Lemur-2 #5 Theresacondor Launch: 2016-03-23[21]
Deployment: 2016-05-18
from ISS Kibo with NanoRacks[26]		 Atlas V 401
Cygnus CRS OA-6		 Commercial
Lemur-2 #6 Kane
Lemur-2 #7 Nick-Allain
Lemur-2 #8 Jeff
Lemur-2 #9 Cubecheese Launch: 2016-03-23[21]
Deployment: 2016-06-22
from Cygnus spacecraft[21]
Lemur-2 #10 Drmuzz
Lemur-2 #11 Bridgeman
Lemur-2 #12 Nate
Lemur-2 #13 Beccadewey Failed to deploy[21]
Lemur-2 #14 Sokolsky Launch: 2016-10-18
Deployment: 2016-11-25
from Cygnus spacecraft[27]		 Antares 230
Cygnus CRS OA-5		 Commercial
Lemur-2 #15 Xiaoqing
Lemur-2 #16 Anubhavthakur
Lemur-2 #17 Wingo

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Spire Crunchbase". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  2. 1 2 "A Higher Education: Satellite Startup Aims to Inspire Students Through Experiments in Space". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  3. ↑ "Spire (Global) Overview". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  4. 1 2 "Spire website". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  5. 1 2 "Nanosatellite Company Spire Raises $25M, Rocket Lab Unveils New Rocket". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  6. 1 2 3 "From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Spire's Ambitious Remote Sensing Strategy". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  7. 1 2 "ArduSat 1,X - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  8. ↑ "ArduSat - Your Arduino Experiment in Space - Kickstarter". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  9. ↑ "ArduSat will let anyone conduct experiments in space for $125". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  10. ↑ "SPIRE ANNOUNCES $25 MILLION IN SERIES A TO FUEL GROWTH AND HELP FULFILL EARLY CUSTOMER DEMAND" (Press release). San Francisco. 2014-06-29. Retrieved 2014-11-21.
  11. ↑ "Spire Raises $40 Million for Its 'Listening Satellites'". 2016. Retrieved Mar 29, 2016.
  12. ↑ "Soon Students Will Be Able To Control Satellites In Space". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  13. ↑ "PSLV Rocket Launches India's 1st Astronomy Satellite, 4 Spire Cubesats". 2015. Retrieved May 18, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Commercial Weather Data Dave Ector". 2016. Retrieved May 18, 2016.
  15. ↑ "NASA - NanoRacks-Ardusat-2". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Spire wants to fight sea pirates from space – using nanosatellites". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  17. ↑ "More space robots as Grishin funds NanoSatisfi". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  18. ↑ "Lemur 1 - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  19. ↑ "SPRSA conference 2015 - Spire final" (PDF).
  20. ↑ "Exhibit".
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 "Lemur-2". Gunters Space Page. Retrieved 27 November 2016.
  22. ↑ "Ardusat 1, X". Gunter's Space Page. 2014. Retrieved 27 November 2016.
  23. ↑ "Ardusat 2". Gunter's Space Page. 2014. Retrieved 27 November 2016.
  24. ↑ "Dnepr - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  25. ↑ "Gunters Space Page". 2015. Retrieved Oct 16, 2015.
  26. ↑ Richardson, Derek (21 May 2016). "International Space Station crew deploys cubesats". Spaceflight Insider.
  27. ↑ Foust, Jeff (26 November 2016). "Spire deploys four satellites from Cygnus". Space News.

External links

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