Spiral Blue was recently awarded a grant to participate in the SmartSat Ideation Challenge, run by the SmartSat CRC. As part of this project, Spiral Blue will rapidly prototype a system capable of measuring fuel moisture content from a high altitude balloon. Use of a balloon platform offers an affordable means to achieve high resolution fuel moisture content mapping at large scales, as well as offering a low risk technical pathway to building space ready systems.
Given the catastrophic 2019/20 bushfire season in Australia, we are resolved to help Australia better prepare for future bushfire seasons. This system will provide the data to help better plan hazard reduction burns, manage utilities and other assets, and predict fire spread. This will build on the work we started last year with the Gravity Challenge.
This project is supported by the SmartSat CRC, a consortium of universities and other research organisations, partnered with industry, that has been funded by the Australian Government to develop know-how and technologies in advanced telecommunications and IoT connectivity, intelligent satellite systems and Earth observation next generation data services. Spiral Blue is a member of the CRC through the Aurora space startup industry cluster.