ConstellR, a SpaceTech startup with a technology that can monitors land surface temperatures from space, has raised a €1m pre-seed round led by FTTF, with the participation of strategic investor OHB Venture Capital, Baden-Württemberg’s state bank L-Bank and an undisclosed investor. The first system is due to go into orbit in December 2021. The company was a finalist for Hottest Ag/FoodTech Startup at the prestigious Europas Awards 2020.
The Freiburg, Germany-based startup monitors the land via a constellation of 30 CubeSats with thermal infrared payloads. The data generated is used by farmers to reduce water and fertilizer usage, and could help them reduce existing monitoring costs by 97%, says the company. ConstellR has a patent-pending miniaturization architecture with ‘free-form optics’ and claims to be able to make it much cheaper to monitor the infrared part of the spectrum than traditional satellite systems.
Dr. Max Gulde, CEO, ConstellR, said: “Our mission is to monitor every single field on the planet every single day of the year and provide precision farming companies with highly accurate temperature data to safeguard the world’s food supply. With our strong financial and technology partners on board, I am looking forward to a time of quantum leaps in our constellation development to change agriculture on the global planetary scale.”
Tobias Schwind, Managing Partner at FTTF, Fraunhofer’s Technology Transfer Fund, said: “ConstellR’s unique technology and business case as well as its passionate team convinced us to make this exciting pre-seed investment.”
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