HotSat-3 reaches orbit to give SatVu daily thermal imaging coverage

SatVu, the British thermal intelligence company, has announced the launch of HotSat-3 aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The launch is a major step in the buildout of the company's constellation. HotSat-3 is SatVu's third mid-wave infrared (MWIR) sensing satellite with 3.5 metre resolution and, once commissioned, will operate alongside HotSat-2 in the current constellation.

With two operational satellites, SatVu will be able to collect high resolution thermal imagery, day and night, every 24 hours anywhere on Earth. That raises the revisit frequency over strategically important sites for customers in the defence and intelligence, economic intelligence and climate resilience sectors.

A single thermal image can establish whether an individual asset or sub-component is active or idle, and show where activity is taking place. Users of HotSat data can discern heat sources such as vehicle and vessel engines, generators, gas flares, petrochemical plant sub-components, pipes, rail cars, data centres, maritime vessel wakes, power plant cooling effluent plumes, heavy industry facility sub-components, urban heat variations and industrial heat pollution.

Higher revisit capability is central to the value of thermal intelligence. Repeated observations build time series that reveal not only status but also intensity and change: whether an asset is operating, how it is operating, and how that operational state is shifting.

At refineries and LNG facilities, for example, high-resolution MWIR thermal data can reveal operational tempo through heat signatures at the asset and subcomponent level, helping analysts identify changes in production, shutdowns, restarts and maintenance.

For defence and intelligence users, the same capability provides an independent information layer for assessing activity at strategic sites and critical infrastructure alongside other data sources, including at night and in locations where ground truth may be limited or delayed.

Anthony Baker, CEO and Co-Founder of SatVu, said: "HotSat-3 is where the constellation optimises what we can deliver for customers. With two operational satellites, we will have double the capacity: customers can collect twice as much imagery, monitor twice as many sites, or return to the same site more often."

"Return to a site, day and night, and you can read its operational state by what is hot and what is not, what is on and what is off. Build those observations into a time series and you move beyond a snapshot to understanding how activity is changing. That is the operational heartbeat we are building SatVu to measure: status, intensity and change across the assets and infrastructure that matter to governments, markets and industry," Baker said.

HotSat-3 builds on the operational capability established by HotSat-2, which began delivering high-resolution thermal intelligence in June 2026.

With launches secured for HotSat-4 and HotSat-5, SatVu has a defined path to further increases in capacity and revisit frequency as the constellation grows. For governments, intelligence organisations, financial institutions and enterprises monitoring critical assets, the company says that means earlier signals, stronger independent verification and a clearer understanding of activity on the ground.

HotSat-3 will now enter commissioning ahead of the start of commercial operations.

CONTACT: https://www.satellitevu.com