Polar Star Space

Founded in 2017, Polar Star Space is an innovative startup aiming to solve ‘problems on the ground’ using hyperspectral remote sensing. The company’s novelty—that combines microsatellite, drone, and smartphone-integrated spectroscope technologies— makes it easy to acquire field data pertaining to agriculture, fishery, energy, and disaster prevention. They have been working in collaboration with Hokkaido University and the Tohoku University Group to explore the opportunities for spectral analysis. “Many companies in the aerospace industry focus on building and launching rockets and satellites, but hardly anyone tries to build equipment to observe the earth and solve its problems. We aim to solve agriculture problems worldwide by utilizing ground and satellite data” says Takahiro Nakamura, Founder and CEO, Polar Star Space.

The agriculture sector—where the company is currently focusing on—can utilize Polar Star Space’s solution to save plantations by detecting the diseases-affected plants early. After all, farmers lose 10 to 15 per cent of their plantations every year. Although many players have tried early-stage detection of large-scale agriculture disease using a hyperspectral camera, no one has ever succeeded. It is often difficult to observe every area of plantations spread across more than 10,000 hectares with drone operations alone, even if it’s done on a weekly basis.

Polar Star Space’s hyperspectral remote sensing solution enables them to capture the complete field data easily and on a timely basis— with the combination of microsatellite, drone, and mobile smartphone-integrated spectroscope. The solution is designed in such a manner that it allows users to choose the wavelengths according to the measurement target and purpose. It can even identify the smallest changes that are invisible to naked eyes.

The plant monitoring and data accumulation process begin with satellite imaging. First, the microsatellite with the high precision reaction wheel technologies observes the targeted area once in two days. The 50 by 50-inch sq microsatellite embedded with hyperspectral imaging technology checks for specific plantation diseases and identifies them. This sky-high investigation can spot a potentially infected area of crops with a certain degree of certainty. Then, the drone operating team comes in to ascertain the detected disease in the suspected area and alert plantation owners to take preventive measures for restricting the disease. Once the combination of satellite and drone identifies the infected plantations, the ground operators can scrutinize the targeted area to verify the results with the ground truth using Polar Star Space’s Smartphone Integrated Spectroscope—a spectral engineering system connected to a standard smartphone.

The company aims to provide a promising solution to agriculture industries worldwide, including Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Africa, Brazil, and even the United States and Japan. With their simplistically sophisticated weekly observation, plantation owners can significantly prevent outbreaks of crop diseases.

To test their technology on various plantations, Polar Star Space is currently working on multiple projects, including banana plantations in the Philippines, palm oil plantations in Malaysia, and grape plantations in California. Every project is currently in the PoC stage. For the banana plantation, the company has already completed satellite image analysis and preparing to work on the drone matching process. They are yet to begin the satellite analysis in palm oil plantation for Ganoderma disease in specific. In the post-pandemic world, Polar Star Space is set to complete its mission of succeeding at early detection of crop diseases.