Finnish hyperspectral startup Kuva Space plans to operate eight hyperspectral satellites in 2028 to obtain daily imagery of Europe’s northern flank.
In addition to Hyperfield-1A and Hyperfield-1B launched in 2024 and 2025, respectively, Kuva is manufacturing six satellites with improved imaging capacity and on-orbit processing for its Hyperfield-2 constellation
“For defense, you can see things with hyperspectral that you can’t see with other modalities,” said Kuva CEO Jarkko Antila. “But if you provide that information too late, it doesn’t matter.”
For a stealth vessel, for example, Kuva satellites will process observations onboard and send the information directly to the customer through intersatellite links. “The customer will know about it in 10 minutes,” Antila said.
Kuva already combines data gathered by Hyperfield-1A and 1B with information from the European Union’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites. Satellites in Kuva’s second-generation constellation will include optical and hyperspectral payloads.
“We are developing a foundation model in order to scale and combine various kinds of data globally,” Antila said. “Then, we can absorb information from other satellites for specific use cases.”
For carbon verification, an independent audit of greenhouse gas emissions produced or captured, for example, hyperspectral data revealing plant species could be combined with synthetic aperture radar observations of tree height.
Hyperfield-2 satellites have a mass of 70 kilograms, compared with 12 kilograms for Hyperfield-1. The Hyperfield-1 constellation was designated a Copernicus Contributing Mission in 2023 and awarded a five-year, 5 million euro ($5.8 million) contract. Kuva won a 1.8 million euro contract in 2024 to supply data to the European Space Agency Civil Security from Space program.
Kuva US is among the 14 companies competing for multiple awards through November 2028 in NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program. As a result, Kuva is eligible to compete for task orders to supply data to U.S. government researchers, contractors and academic partners as well as state, local and territorial and tribal government personnel. The contract ceiling for CSDA purchases is $476 million.