Polish-Finnish satellite company ICEYE has been contracted by NASA to provide synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for 5-year Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. Since 2020, CSDA has been identifying, evaluating, and acquiring data from commercial sources, including ICEYE satellites, to support scientific research, analysis and application objectives of NASA’s Earth Science Division.
Unlike traditional Earth observation satellites, SAR satellites can collect data in daylight, at night, through cloud cover and under other challenging atmospheric conditions. Importantly for science, radar sensors provide millimetre accuracy in their measurement of features on Earth’s surface, allowing detailed investigation for scientific study. Unique to ICEYE’s constellation capabilities is the ability to produce both wide area datasets, such as glacial regions or deserts, or targeted areas, like forests or coastlines, with a high revisit rate that optimizes scientific value and supports breakthrough scientific research applications.
Owning the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation, ICEYE provides objective and near real-time insights, ensuring that customers have unmatched access to actionable data. As a trusted partner to governments and commercial industries, ICEYE delivers intelligence in sectors such as insurance, natural catastrophe response and recovery, security, maritime monitoring, and finance, enabling decision-making that contributes to community resilience and sustainable development.
ICEYE established by Rafał Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila in 2014 is now the world leader in SAR after having deployed a constellation of 40 satellites, used i.a. by British and Brazilian governments and US armed forces. The most recent ones were launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in August 2024. ICEYE operates internationally through offices in Finland, Poland, Spain, the UK and the US employing over 700 people, including 30 in flight control centre in Warsaw, Poland.
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