OroraTech operates an active constellation of satellites equipped with multispectral thermal infrared imagers that observe in the midwave (MWIR) and longwave (LWIR) infrared bands. The constellation is designed for high revisit frequency: in 2026, OroraTech provides up to twice‑daily coverage, with revisit intervals as short as 15 minutes planned for future deployments.

OroraTech data products available through CSDA include Level 1 thermal infrared imagery, Near Real-Time (NRT) Active fire detections, and Land Surface Temperature (LST). Applications span wildfire detection and monitoring (emergency response, pre- and post-analysis), diurnal studies including urban heat mapping, water-stress monitoring, agricultural and aquacultural monitoring, meteorological use cases, and environmental research.

Obtaining Data

All newly awarded commercial data provider products are currently undergoing CSDA evaluation. If you have any questions about these products, please email CSDA Support.

Copyright

Data products and derivatives for imagery must contain copyright markings as specified below, where YYYY is the year of the image acquisition.

• For data products: “© OroraTech GmbH YYYY. All rights reserved.”
• For derivatives: “Includes copyrighted material of OroraTech GmbH. All rights reserved.”
• A joint copyright notice may be used as appropriate.

CSDA Acknowledgment

To help CSDA identify your publications, we request that you include the following acknowledgment when publishing work created using these data:

“This work used data made available through the NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program.” Authorized users should send CSDA a courtesy copy of any publications that include CSDA-distributed data.

Documentation

• Product User Guide Level 1C
• Product User Guide LST
• Product User Guide NRT Active Fire
• Data Management Plan Level 1C: CEOS-ARD Metadata Compliance

OroraTech Commercial Data Available to Authorized CSDA Users

Satellite Mission Characteristics

	F002	OTC-P1	Final capacity
# satellites	1	8	100-200
Status	Operational	Operational
Start of Ops.	Q3 2023	Q1 2026	Est. 2030
End of Ops.	Q4 2026	Q1 2029
Altitude	525 km	525x550 km
SSO MLTAN	01:30	16:00 ± 15min
Inclination	97.7°	97.53°
Revisit time	7 days max.	0.5 days max.	15 min
Instrument	2x SAFIRE to double swath	2x SAFIRE to double swath

Edge processing power

Up to 21 TOPS / 1.69 TFLOPs each, optimized for image processing and AI. Updateable software stack. On-orbit fire detection.

Instrument Characteristics

Instrument Name	SAFIRE
Spectral Bands	MWIR: 3.4 – 4.2 μm; LWIR: 10.4 – 12.5 μm
Dynamic range	MWIR: 300 - 650 K; LWIR: 260 - 640 K
GSD at Nadir	Design: 200 m / 210 m, Threshold (max.): 250 m
Swath per instrument (double per satellite)	Design: 210 km / 220 km, Threshold (min.): 170 km

Product Characteristics

	Level 1C	Level 2 NRT Active Fire	Level 2 LST
Product definition	Orthorectified and geolocated multispectral raster tiles; every target pixel averaged over several frames	Near Real-Time fire detections	Atmospherically and emissivity-corrected Land Surface Temperature raster tiles
Units	Radiances and brightness temperature (Top-of-atmosphere)	Fire detections	Kelvin
Format	GeoTIFF, netCDF	GeoJSON, netCDF	GeoTIFF, netCDF
Product Resolution	200 m	200 m	200 m
Latency median (OTC-P1)	NRT: <9h, NTC: <48h	<1h	NRT: <24h, NTC: 7 days
Performance	Absolute Radiometric accuracy RMSE: LWIR: <3K MWIR: <8K	Min detectable fire size: 4x4m	Absolute Radiometric accuracy RMSE: <3K
Acquisition type	archive and tasking	archive and tasking	archive and tasking

Authorized Data Use and Users

Access to this data is governed by the CSDA End User License Agreements (EULAs). The minimum access level for data is the USG license. Depending on the specific data products provided, some or all data may also be available under higher-tier CSDA licenses, including USG-Plus and Public licenses.

Under the applicable license tier, authorized users may include:

• U.S. Government federal employees
• State, local, territorial, and tribal government personnel
• U.S. Government contractors and subcontractors
• U.S. Government–funded researchers and academic partners
• Other users authorized under applicable CSDA license levels (USG, USG-Plus, or Public)

All data use must comply with the terms of the EULA. All data requests must be reviewed and approved by NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program.

Top Banner Image: Five thermal images captured by OroraTech's FOREST satellites. In the Level 1C products, cooler surfaces appear black to deep purple, warmer surfaces orange to red, and the hottest — active fire — near-white. In the Land Surface Temperature (LST) products, cooler surfaces appear blue or teal and warmer surfaces appear red. From left to right: sea surface temperature off the North Carolina coast, where thermal gradients trace offshore water masses (LST product); a wildfire near Spokane, Washington, in the midwave infrared band (Level 1C MWIR), which the fire detection product is built on; the same Spokane wildfire in the longwave infrared band (Level 1C LWIR), where the entire landscape registers as warm; urban heat islands across New York City rendered semi-transparently over a visible-light image of the city for geographic reference (LST product); and Lake Tahoe, on the California–Nevada border, whose warmer water stands out against the cold surrounding Sierra Nevada terrain (Level 1C LWIR). Credit: OroraTech GmbH