Unseenlabs, the Breton start-up that monitors boats from space

Successful launch. On the night of Monday August 16 to Tuesday August 17, an Arianespace Vega rocket took off from Kourou, in French Guiana, with five small satellites on board. To customers accustomed to the Guyanese space base, Airbus and the European Space Agency, the Breton start-up Unseenlabs has joined for the first time. This young company based in Rennes sends a nanosatellite, no bigger than a shoebox and weighing ten kilos, into space to monitor maritime traffic.

In low orbit, 550 kilometers from Earth, it will be the fourth in the series to scan the oceans. Hence its name, BRO 4. “This acronym means“ Breizh Reconnaissance Orbiter ”, to underline our origins, but it is also the contraction of brothers, to remind us that we are three brothers in this affair ”, laughs Jonathan Galic. With Clément, the youngest of the siblings, these two 40-year-old engineers founded the company in 2015, after having worked one at Airbus, in Toulouse, the other at the National Center for Space Studies. Their older brother, Benjamin, is also part of the adventure. A business lawyer, he deals with contracts and legal matters.

A single satellite to locate an object

The young growth has launched to exploit a technology for intercepting radiofrequency signals from space developed by Jonathan Galic. While usually three satellites are needed to locate an object, by triangulation, in his case, only one is needed. “We focused on maritime surveillance. Because, overall, we do not really know where precisely the boats are in the world, their beacons can be cut, or modified, says the engineer. With our technology, we can locate electromagnetic emissions to within a mile, and each boat has its own signature, like a fingerprint. ” They appear as dots on a map and readings can be taken several times a day, allowing them to be tracked.

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“It is also useful to fight against illegal fishing, to identify the degassing of boats or to enforce the prohibition of access in protected areas”, he specifies. “We are also interested in areas quite far from the coast, where you need planes or helicopters to get there. This tracking system saves hours of surveillance flight. ” The company already has around ten subscribers to this service, including the French Navy, but also customers in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Japan with the trading company Marubeni.

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