Mission Space teamed up with the SnT Centre at the University of Luxembourg to create what they call ‘the most accurate space weather forecasting system in the world’. Silicon Luxembourg met with Mission Space co-founders Alex Pospekhov and Alexey Shirobokov to learn more.
The partnership between the University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) and Mission Space, signed in December 2023, aims to develop machine learning models, which will be trained on MeluXina, the supercomputer powered by LuxProvide, with space weather data.
Mission Space, which aims to protect space assets by collecting high-quality data on space weather, estimates that the annual economic impact of space weather is around $10 billion. Normal space weather may include geomagnetic storms that endanger satellites in orbit: SpaceX lost 38 satellites in its Starlink constellation, with about $100 million in losses incurred.
But space weather can also have terrestrial implications, resulting in the burning of transformers on Earth and impacting power grids. For example, in March 1989, a solar storm caused a nine-hour power outage in the province of Quebec, Canada, affecting about 6 million residents.
“We plan to install 24 satellites to cover the entire Earth, and this system will allow us to predict solar flares and provide customers with real-time space weather data.”
Based in theLuxembourg City incubator, Mission Space is one of the startups selected for the 11th edition of the Fit4Start accelerator programme in June 2021. The startup also plans to apply for other support programmes.