When Malaysian flight MH370 went missing, the world’s superpowers could not locate this plane with all of their assets. We thought that more could be done to monitor this one planet and home that we have.
Capella Space is the first U.S. company to launch and operate Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites.
The growth of the commercial space industry and advances in cloud computing gave birth to a smallsat revolution, creating a wealth of information from space. However, almost every company relied on optical satellites, which face significant challenges in timely and reliable Earth Observation.
In 2016, Capella Space was founded to enable a richer understanding of our planet in entirely new and powerful ways. The company saw an opportunity to use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to monitor the Earth, including the 75% that is either covered in the darkness of night or obscured by clouds.
In 2018 Capella Space launched the United States’ first commercial SAR satellite, “Denali”, in its development of a constellation capable of 24/7 all-weather monitoring of the planet.
In 2020 the company launched “Sequoia”, proving that the United States could produce the highest quality commercial SAR imagery in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional SAR satellite manufacturers.
Today the company is building the next generation of SAR sensors to develop a constellation that improve decisions about commerce, conservation and security on Earth.
2018
Capella’s First Launch
Capella Space developed both airborne and spaceborne prototypes to revolutionize Synthetic Aperture Radar. On December 3, 2018 Denali was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, accelerating research and development for future Capella satellites.
2020
The First Commercial U.S. SAR Satellite
Capella successfully launched the first operational U.S. SAR satellite, Capella-2, producing the world’s highest resolution commercial SAR. Capella partners with AWS and Inmarsat to rapidly increase tasking and downlinking speeds.
