Spire Pivots Weather CubeSats to SIGINT Missions
31st August 2021
Nanosatellite startup Spire Global didn’t set out to become a provider of signals intelligence (SIGINT). But with the accidental discovery that its antennas for weather forecasting were also picking up signals being used to jam the Global Positioning System, the pivot just made sense, according to Spire’s new-ish head of US government sales, Conor Brown.
“We actually first, sort of, serendipitously discovered this capability when we were calibrating our first reflectometry satellites,” he told Breaking Defense in advance of last week’s annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
“It’s been really interesting to repurpose our weather satellites, and apply them to a completely different mission set,” he added. “And so we’re looking at a lot of future architectures — more purpose built solutions, but also maximizing the capability of our satellites on orbit.”