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. (formerly Nanosatisfi, Inc.) is an American private company specializing in data gathered from a proposed network of small satellites.[4] It has successfully deployed four CubeSats.[5][2]

History

ArduSat-1, ArduSat-X and PicoDragon photographed from the ISS after their launch on Nov. 19, 2013.

Spire was founded in 2012 as Nanosatisfi, Inc. Spire was founded in San Francisco and later opened offices in Glasgow and Singapore.[6] The company was founded to create ArduSat, a crowd-funded satellite, which was launched on August 3rd, 2013.[5][7] Crowd funding in the amount of $106,330 was raised via Kickstarter.[8] The startup was incubated at Lemnos Labs[5] and investments totaling $1.5M were made in a seed round by Shasta Ventures, Emerge, Beamonte Investments, Grishin Robotics, and Lemnos Labs.[9][1] On July 29th, 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.[10][1][6]

The company’s first three ArduSat satellites were named after a portmanteau of Arduino, the technology on which they were based, and Satellite.[11][7] In August 2014, it was announced that Ardusat was spun out of Spire and would focus on educational technology.[2]

Spire’s CEO, Peter Platzer, is a physicist and Harvard Business School career coach.[12] All Spire employees get year-round career coaching that centers around a quarterly career progression discussion to ensure that skills and job duties are a good fit for each employee.[13]

Satellites

Spire satellites are built to conform to the CubeSat standard. The company uses minimally adapted consumer electronics to reduce cost.[14] The satellites are placed in Low-Earth Orbit and are scheduled to be retired and replaced every two years.[15][16] The Lemur-1 satellite was launched as a prototype for a constellation of 50 or more satellites.[17]

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.[5]

Satellite List

Satellite Name Configuration Launch Date Launch Vehicle Purpose
Ardusat-1 1U CubeSat 2013-08-03 H-2B-304 [18] Public experimentation
Ardusat-X 1U CubeSat 2013-08-03 H-2B-304 [18] Public experimentation
Ardusat-2 2U CubeSat 2014-01-09 H-2B-304 [19] Public experimentation
Lemur-1 3U CubeSat 2014-06-19 Dnepr [20] Prototype
Lemur-2-Peter 3U CubeSat 2015-09-28 PSLV-XL [21] Commercial
Lemur-2-Jeroen 3U CubeSat 2015-09-28 PSLV-XL [21] Commercial
Lemur-2-Joel 3U CubeSat 2015-09-28 PSLV-XL [21] Commercial
Lemur-2-Chris 3U CubeSat 2015-09-28 PSLV-XL [21] Commercial

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Spire Crunchbase". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 "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. ↑ "Spire website". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Spire’s Ambitious Remote Sensing Strategy". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  6. 1 2 "Nanosatellite Company Spire Raises $25M, Rocket Lab Unveils New Rocket". 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. ↑ "Soon Students Will Be Able To Control Satellites In Space". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  12. ↑ "Peter Platzer >> Techonomy". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  13. ↑ "Meet The CEO Who's Never Fired Anyone". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  14. ↑ "NASA - NanoRacks-Ardusat-2". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  15. ↑ "Spire wants to fight sea pirates from space – using nanosatellites". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  16. ↑ "More space robots as Grishin funds NanoSatisfi". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Lemur 1 - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  18. 1 2 "H-2B - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  19. ↑ "Antares-120 - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  20. ↑ "Dnepr - Gunter's Space Page". 2014. Retrieved Nov 21, 2014.
  21. 1 2 3 4 "Gunters Space Page". 2015. Retrieved Oct 16, 2015.

External links

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