The Spire data lake will provide users with sets of proprietary, differentiating, high-quality data for research and non-commercial product development activities. The Luxembourg Space Agency co-funds this collaboration initiative through its national space programme, LuxIMPULSE. The initiative is designed to spur the development of commercial space research by providing consistently reliable, critical data at no cost to the public, academic, and research communities.
“We are extremely excited to contribute even further to the dynamism and cross-pollination efforts of the commercial space ecosystem in Luxembourg,” said Peter Platzer, CEO and co-founder of Spire Global. “It is our conviction that our data will empower Luxembourg to attract ambitious companies looking for an enabling environment for research and product development by providing Luxembourg with a unique differentiator on the global business marketplace.”
Ships and airplanes tracking, weather monitoring
Spire’s data and analytics illuminate parts of the world where collecting data is notoriously difficult, tracking ships, planes, and weather and in remote regions which often go unmonitored. Spire has become an established leader in the space data industry and is partnering with the most well-regarded industry experts to create new access to highly relevant datasets for customers worldwide.
The data sets to be offered by Spire include Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, which is used for tracking the movements of ships and vessels across the world, and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data, which is used for tracking airplanes across global airways. It also contains cutting-edge Radio Occultation data (GNSS-RO), a key element of weather forecasts. GNSS-RO allows for unprecedented levels of precision in all meteorological prevision efforts by providing comprehensive, global, high density data and detailed atmospheric layer information that traditional data collection methods fail to capture. In addition, Spire will provide Total Electron Content (TEC), offering users constant assessments of the state of the ionosphere, which increases the accuracy of navigation (GNSS).
Future opportunities
“There are numerous present and future opportunities for space data in the energy, transport and logistics sectors, just to name a few,” said Marc Serres, CEO of the Luxembourg Space Agency. “Also, global challenges due to growing populations, increased demand for resources and climate change require information about our planet which space based solutions can provide. Following the launch of the LSA Data Center, the Space Analytics Data Lake is a key component of our strategy, which will stimulate the development of new downstream services and products in Luxembourg.”