Pixxel’s hyperspectral satellite. Photo: Pixxel

Space startup Pixxel has closed a $7.3M seed funding round and announced plans on Wednesday to build a constellation of hyperspectral small satellites. Omnivore VC and Techstars participated in the round, along with Lightspeed Ventures, Blume, growX, and Ryan Johnson, formerly of Planet Labs and BlackBridge.

The company said its first satellite will launch within the next few months. Its first satellite was originally targeted to launch on the PSLV C51 mission, but Pixxel said that software issues surfaced during final testing, and the company decided to reevaluate the satellite software. 

Hyperspectral imagery contains hundreds of bands of different segments of blue, green, and red than multispectral imagery. Pixxel said this technology will allow the company to capture exact chemical signatures which will serve the needs of agriculture, energy and environmental conservation sectors. Other Earth Observation (EO) companies Satellogic and Orbital Sidekick are also working on hyperspectral imagery. 

“Our new funding enables us to build a health monitor for the planet through the world’s most advanced hyperspectral small satellites. This enables us to capture some of the richest imagery that’s ever been beamed down to earth … and we believe they will become the holy grail of remote sensing,” commented Awais Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Pixxel. 

Pixxel was founded in 2019 when Ahmed and co-founder Kshitij Khandelwal were 20 years old. The company is based in Los Angeles and Bengaluru, India and has partnerships and has worked with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Maxar Technologies, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).The company said this funding will allow it to rapidly scale operations.