At Space Capital, we often talk about the transformational potential of space-based technologies to create not only economic value, but planetary resilience. That potential was on full display during our “Space Tech for a Resilient Future” panel at the 2025 Space Capital Summit.
Three extraordinary leaders, who are leveraging space to tackle some of the most pressing climate challenges of our time, joined Tom Ingersoll in this conversation:
- Jonny Dyer, CEO of Muon Space
- Kate Dargan, Senior Wildfire Advisor at the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation
- Steve Hamburg, Chief Scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and Executive Director of MethaneSAT
Together, they painted a compelling picture of how space-based sensing, data, and insight are enabling a new era of planetary stewardship—one driven by precision, speed, and action.
A New Era of Access, Capability, and Impact
Jonny Dyer opened the panel by describing the evolution of space technology in three waves:
- Wave One: The “big iron” era of government-led, billion-dollar satellite programs—think GPS and weather satellites—enabled global infrastructure but remained largely inaccessible to private actors.
- Wave Two: The “homebrew” era beginning in the early 2000s. Jonny, Tom, and the Skybox team, alongside early commercial pioneers, helped prove that smaller, faster, cheaper satellites could deliver valuable data.
- Wave Three (Today): We’re now entering the enterprise phase, where scalable, networked satellite systems—powered by advances in semiconductors, sensors, AI, and launch—are embedding space data directly into global industries.
“At Muon, we buy Falcon 9 launches like airline tickets,” Jonny said. “Access to space has never been easier or cheaper. The challenge now is how we use that access to deliver meaningful insights.”
FireSat: Detecting and Defining Fire in a Warming World
Enter FireSat, a pioneering project led by the Earth Fire Alliance in partnership with Muon Space, Environmental Defense Fund, Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Google.org, and Minderoo Foundation. Kate, Senior Wildfire Advisor at the Moore Foundation and former California State Fire Marshal, understands the stakes better than most.
“We’re still fighting fires the same way we did 600 years ago,” she said. “That’s changing—and FireSat is leading that transformation.”
FireSat is a 52-satellite constellation designed to detect wildfires in near real-time, track their perimeter growth, and measure their heat intensity at sub-acre resolution. The first prototype launched earlier this year; three more satellites are scheduled for deployment in 2026.
But Kate emphasized that FireSat isn’t just about suppression—it’s about strategy.
“We need to stop thinking of all fires as bad,” she explained. “Many ecosystems depend on regular, low-intensity fire. Our current suppression tactics are driving a dangerous ‘fire deficit’ that threatens biodiversity, watershed health, and carbon cycles.”
FireSat’s high-resolution heat mapping will allow land managers to distinguish between destructive fires and ecologically beneficial ones—enabling a smarter, more nuanced approach to fire management.
The implications are enormous. With FireSat’s data, firefighting decisions can shift from reactive to proactive—from binary “suppress or not” to a calibrated approach that balances safety, climate impact, and ecosystem health.
MethaneSAT: Radical Transparency for Climate Action
Steve Hamburg, a scientist turned NGO leader, is spearheading a parallel revolution. As head of the MethaneSAT mission, he’s leading the first satellite-based system designed specifically to measure methane emissions with policy-grade precision.
“Over 90% of greenhouse gas data is currently modeled, not measured,” Steve told us. “That’s like trying to fight a fire with a smoke detector that only guesses where the fire might be.”
MethaneSAT changes that. Its spectrometer can detect methane concentrations to within two parts per billion—a level of accuracy previously thought impossible. But MethaneSAT isn’t just a better sensor. It’s also a software platform that converts raw concentration data into flux maps, answering the critical questions: Where are the emissions? How much? And how are they changing over time?
Methane is a particularly strategic target. It’s responsible for 30% of current global warming, yet it’s also short-lived in the atmosphere—meaning reductions today yield rapid climate benefits.
“This is our down payment on climate stability,” Steve said. “And now we can finally measure it.”
MethaneSAT, like FireSat, was built with philanthropic capital. But both teams are actively exploring commercial partnerships that could expand the reach, utility, and sustainability of these data sources.
A Platform for AI and Autonomy
Both FireSat and MethaneSAT are, at their core, data platforms. They’re not just observing the planet—they’re building real-time operating systems for it.
That’s where artificial intelligence comes in.
Kate described the immense opportunity—and complexity—of training AI systems to manage wildfire. “We need AI that can evaluate four things simultaneously: historical fire patterns, current conditions, ecological needs, and future climate forecasts. And it has to do that across tens of thousands of ground plots in real time.”
Imagine drones deploying not just water, but precision-calibrated responses based on AI-optimized fire intensity models. “By 2050,” Kate predicted, “I expect we’ll have fleets of heavy-lift autonomous aircraft managing fires with minimal human involvement.”
Similarly, MethaneSAT’s next chapter includes automated monitoring of CO₂, enabling cross-sector tracking of emissions at an unprecedented scale.
And in both cases, the raw data—once expensive, rare, and siloed—is now becoming open infrastructure. “This is our GPS moment,” Steve said. “We need entrepreneurs to build on top of these datasets the way others built on GPS.”
The Investment Opportunity
While both missions were philanthropically funded, they’re not charity. They’re catalysts—seeding an ecosystem of commercial applications.
Jonny noted that falling costs are rapidly unlocking new market opportunities. “Sensor prices are down an order of magnitude. Launch costs will drop again when Starship goes commercial. Embedded AI will only accelerate it.”
Kate sees immediate relevance for insurance, utilities, and infrastructure. “The data we’re generating has clear business use cases: asset protection, claims verification, water management. We’re already talking to partners across those sectors.”
Steve agreed. “This isn’t a science project. It’s a data revolution. And we’re just scratching the surface of how it can be used.”
What’s Next?
- Jonny: “We’re building a meshed, intelligent infrastructure in orbit—like an internet of satellites—that seamlessly integrates with terrestrial networks.”
- Kate: “We’re redefining fire management through calibrated intensity metrics, AI-driven response, and massive-scale autonomy. And we’re building the business case to back it.”
- Steve: “We’re replacing modeled assumptions with real data—and using that transparency to drive meaningful, global climate action.”
The message was clear: space tech is no longer a tool for observing the planet. It’s a lever for transforming it.
As we face increasingly frequent climate disasters—from wildfires to methane leaks—the need for high-fidelity, real-time, global data has never been greater. FireSat and MethaneSAT represent a new model for planetary resilience: philanthropy-funded, commercially scalable, AI-integrated, and open by design.
But this is just the beginning.
Like GPS before it, these systems will serve as platforms for innovation—unlocking new products, services, and business models. The opportunity is not only to mitigate climate risk, but to build a new generation of space-enabled, Earth-focused companies.
