MyRadar investing in satellites
September 1, 2023
By Chris Forrester
The MyRadar weather app sees more than 50 million downloads and a very high rating from its users. It is working on establishing its own constellation of satellites.
MyRadar CTO Sarvesh Garimella, in an interview, says the company is on its way to becoming a space company. He says the company is purpose-building its own satellites to further improve its coverage. MyRadar’s parent company is Acme AtronOmatic.
Key to the strategy is supplying real-time coverage for problems such as hurricanes and wildfires. He says that depending on other commercial sources for satellite imagery was simply not fast enough and subject to delays in obtaining suitable coverage. Geo-based data would come in every 15 minutes and while LEO images could give better images these would only be available twice a day.
Garimella added that low earth orbiting satellites were now much more affordable and the cost of entry, including launch costs, were now much more affordable. It is intending building around 150 satellites. It launched its first prototype satellite in 2019, and three others in 2022. These are no longer active. However, two ‘Pathfinder’ commercial satellites will be launched in 2024. Albert Orbital is the company’s integrator, but the company is building its own satellites.
The company has just secured a 2-year grant from the US National Oceanic and Atmospherics’ (NOAA) Orbital Wildfire Resilience (OWR) project which taps into MyRadar’s extensive coverage for its own fire-watching exercises.
MyRadar has also been successful at the recent 44th Annual Telly Awards where it picked up 11 Telly Awards.