User:MultiPolitikus/sandbox/OroraTech

OroraTech is a German aerospace start-up company aiming to improve wildfire monitoring by employing nanosatellites. It was was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the MOVE-II CubeSat project at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The headquarter is in Munich, Germany.

History
OroraTech was founded by Thomas Grübler, Björn Stoffers, Florian Mauracher and Rupert Amann. After the idea had been born during the MOVE-II CubeSat project at the TUM, they worked on a spin-off since January 2017 before incorporating the company as Orbital Oracle Technologies GmbH (short: OroraTech) in September 2018.

OroraTech’s technology is based on academic research at the TUM, with TUM professors Ulrich Walter, a former astronaut, and Alexander W. Koch acting as advisors to the company. The advisory board further includes Johann G. Goldammer, leader of the United Nations Joint ILO/ECE/FAO Expert Network, and Clemens Kaiser, former Director of Program Development at EUMETSAT, among others.

OroraTech has raised a total of €1.377 from four business angels in a pre-seed (Dec 2018) and seed investment round (Dec 2019) and received further initial funding support by various programs (see #Programs and Achievements).

Product
OroraTech operates a software platform for the detection and monitoring of wildfires based on measuring thermal-infrared radiation from space. The company is using data from existing satellites and develops their own constellation of 3-U CubeSats with thermal-infrared cameras to further improve temporal and spatial resolution of fire detection.

Software Platform
The platform is providing different base maps and overlays for vegetation, fire risk, and weather data. Fire detections are clustered and evaluated for false positive rejection using a learning algorithm. Data on wildfires is also accessible via application programming interface (API). Users can receive customized notifications of fire detections for monitored areas and analyze the propagation of fires with historic data. At the current stage, the platform uses data from twelve satellites in polar and geostationary orbits, including such by NASA, ESA, and EUMETSAT. In early 2020, the platform had around 100 active users.

Satellite Technology
The satellite technology is based on research from the MOVE-II project at the Chair of Astronautics (LRT) at the TUM. During this project, a 1-Unit CubeSat developed by more than 120 students was launched with SpaceX in December 2018.

Each of OroraTech’s satellites will be 10 cm x 10 cm x 34 cm in size, weigh around 1.2 kg, and will be launched to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at a height of 600-700 km. OroraTech’s nanosatellites are based on three key innovations: a patented new CubeSat bus which originates in the University research, a patent-pending uncooled thermal-infrared imager for space applications, and a GPU-accelerated on-orbit processing to reduce the downlink latency and bandwidth, cutting down the delay of wildfire alert dissemination.

Programs and Achievements
OroraTech has taken part in several programs:
 * Google for Startups Accelerator
 * German Accelerator
 * ESA Business Incubation
 * EXIST
 * Plug and Play Brazil
 * SME Instrument Phase 1

The company also achieved the 1st prize at the European Student Challenge 2018 of House of Mentors and won the best pitch at the StartUp Night! of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).