Australian startup Esper Satellite Imagery launched its Over the Rainbow-2 (OTR-2) hyperspectral camera to orbit yesterday—flying as a hosted payload aboard Dhruva Space’s LEAP-1 mission.
The payload, a near-infrared sensor, aims to help customers in agriculture, mining, and defense to better understand the minerals hidden beneath the surface of the planet.
First time, long time: As the name suggests, OTR-2 is Esper’s second attempt at flying hardware in space.
OTR-1, which launched aboard a Space Machines bus in March 2024, ended prematurely after the satellite failed to make contact with the ground shortly after launch.
Undeterred, Esper came up with a virtual mission—called OTR-X—where it leveraged publicly available datasets and partnered with organizations already operating near-infrared sensors on orbit.
The stopgap measure paid off, and the company’s sales ballooned. Esper has secured over $32M in bookings to date, according to Shoaib Iqbal, Esper’s CEO.
How it works: The aim of the Over the Rainbow missions is to demonstrate a low-cost version of Esper’s hyperspectral sensor. All together, OTR-1, OTR-X, and OTR-2 cost the company under $1M to develop, test, and launch, Iqbal said.
This sensor type can identify the unique hyperspectral signatures of many natural resources, including rare Earth elements—helping mining companies save millions of dollars in exploration costs without losing any accuracy.
“I don’t know how the statistic is possible, but so far, we’ve had a 100% hit rate,” Iqbal told Payload—meaning that the data from OTR-X has been consistently confirmed by geologists on the ground. “It almost sounds fake.”
Esper sells satellite data for just $1.50 per km2, whereas typically mineral exploration projects on the ground can cost over $4M per site, according to the company. It’s no wonder that some 95% of the company’s revenue has come from the mining industry thus far.
On the mission with Dhruva, Esper is flying alongside Akula Tech, another Aussie space startup, whose Nexus-01 edge computer will perform real-time processing of the hyperspectral data Esper gathers.
What’s next: Now that the final demo mission is launched, Iqbal expects engineering to ramp up quickly. Esper is developing the first of its true shortwave infrared hyperspectral sensors for its flagship constellation—called the Four Leaf Clover (FLC) mission—which will consist of four payloads on four different buses.
FLC aims to offer more robust insights about the minerals hiding around the planet, and will focus on the global discovery of elements in high demand for the defense and deep tech industries—including lithium, copper, gold, and rare Earth elements.
Esper expects to launch its first FLC payload next year, and has signed a contract with Loft Orbital to host the first two of these missions.
