SuperSharp to lead EU-funded THEOSCOPE thermal EO mission
SuperSharp · EnduroSat · Universidade de Coimbra
The EU awarded SuperSharp's THEOSCOPE consortium a €4 million Horizon grant for a thermal-imaging satellite.
what happened
The European Commission awarded a €4,009,463 Horizon Europe grant to THEOSCOPE, a project coordinated by UK-based SuperSharp Space Systems with partners EnduroSat (Bulgaria) and Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal), per the EU's CORDIS project database. The grant runs from September 2026 to August 2028 and funds SPIRIT, a thermal-infrared telescope imaging at 6.5 metres per pixel across a 33km swath, plus an onboard GPU processor the project says is more than twice as powerful as those on most current EO satellites, per Electronics Weekly.
why it matters
A dedicated high-resolution thermal satellite would give EO resellers a new data layer, fire and leak detection within 30 minutes of capture per the project, that current optical and SAR constellations do not offer; the grant is early-stage R&D funding, not a flight contract, so the capability remains unproven on orbit.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- SuperSharp, EnduroSat, Universidade de Coimbra
- Category
- contract
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 5 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-10-08
- Published
- 2026-10-08 14:33 UTC