Google Positions FireSat to Better Identify Forest Fires From Orbit

Google is building the world's largest firewatch tower – about 100 miles tall. At Google I/O, CEO Sundar Pichai spotlighted FireSat, a project Google supports along with the Earth Fire Alliance to improve wildfire-spotting capabilities so blazes can be located and contained faster. Existing early detection satellites can pick up fires that have grown to two to three acres in size (roughly two football fields). Using multispectral imaging and AI software to compare snapshots of a location with the previous 1,000 images of the area, FireSat will be able to detect flames "as small as 270 square feet, about the size of a one-car garage", said Pichai. Currently, a single prototype FireSat satellite orbits the planet in low-Earth orbit, which Pichai said updates its imaging every 12 hours. When the constellation of 50 satellites is in place over the next few years, that frequency should be reduced to every 20 minutes. "For those who live here in California and so many places around the wo ... Read full article.