These new satellites are designed to spot wildfires before they spread

When a grass fire started by the side of an Oregon road last summer, it covered just half an acre—too small to show up on typical satellites. But it was spotted by a new prototype from FireSat, a satellite program designed specifically to detect wildfires. Fire agencies weren’t using the system at the time, but once fully operational, it could send alerts before fires spiral out of control.

Now, with a $26 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund that builds on earlier support from Google.org and other partners, three FireSat satellites will launch next month and begin tracking fires globally. By 2030, Earth Fire Alliance, the nonprofit behind the program, plans to have a constellation of 50 satellites in place, revisiting every point on the planet every 20 minutes.

“We realized there was a big gap in the understanding of fire,” says Brian Collins, the nonprofit’s executive director. The organization, which launched in 2024, started after the team met with more than 200 fire agencies, land managers, and policymakers to better understand how to improve resilience to wildfires. “The biggest theme that kept coming up was better data to truly understand the scope and scale of wildfire across the planet,” he says.

Weather satellites can already spot some fires, but they weren’t built for that purpose. FireSat’s satellites, designed by Muon Space, collect data across wavelengths beyond visible light, each revealing something different. Short-wave infrared can see through smoke. Mid-wave infrared can detect both intense fires and lower-intensity burns. Long-wave infrared measures ground temperature. Near infrared shows how plants and trees are responding to fire.

It’s unique to collect all that data simultaneously and in high resolution, down to a small fire that’s roughly the size of a garage. It’s also possible to tell the difference between a fire and something like the sun reflecting off a metal roof, “so we don’t have false alarms,” says Collins.

The technology can work alongside other tools like cameras, which can quickly detect fires that are just starting but can’t necessarily see the full picture. If multiple cameras aren’t in place, it can be difficult to pinpoint the location of smoke as a fire starts. And as a fire grows and smoke fills the air, it can block the view of the camera, but the satellite can show where the fire is moving.

Fire agencies from Colorado to Australia are already early partners on the project. In the Amazon rainforest, where agencies may not learn about a fire until it has been burning for 24 hours, FireSat could help them respond much earlier. It can also track low-intensity fires that may not need intervention. One goal is to build a far more comprehensive picture of wildfire activity and improve fire science, since today only the largest fires are typically reported. The project is also creating a global network of fire agencies, so a team in California, for example, can trade notes with one in Portugal.

As climate change is making wildfires larger and more intense, “we saw an opportunity to do something about that,” says Tom Taylor, president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, launched by Jeff Bezos in 2020 with a $10 billion commitment to fight climate change and protect the natural world. (To date, only a small portion of the funds have been given out; the fund has said that it plans to disburse all of it by the end of the decade.) “We saw an opportunity to do something quickly—we could make sure the launch happens this year rather than waiting a year,” Taylor says. “An important part of our decision is where we can make a difference.”

As the project collects data, creating the first complete record of fire on Earth, the data can be used to predict how future fires will spread or where they might start. “Ultimately, if you build a database of this information and you start to combine it with other information, like weather, landscape, and terrain, we hope that you can get [to a place] where now you’re predicting wildfire,” Taylor says.