Urban Sky's Hot Spot system, now in its third year within NASA's FireSense (ROSES FireTech) program, provides persistent, near-real-time thermal imaging of wildfires from the stratosphere.
The system addresses a coverage gap between spaceborne and airborne sensing. Satellite systems often lack the spatial resolution and revisit frequency required for active wildfire management, while crewed aircraft and drones compete for airspace during suppression operations and are constrained by safe flying conditions. Operating from the stratosphere, Hot Spot delivers persistent, high-resolution coverage of active wildfires.
The Hot Spot system payload pairs a long-wave infrared (LWIR) imager with a visible and near-infrared (VNIR) imager. The LWIR system resolves fire perimeter, active hotspots, and calibrated blackbody temperature, which is used to retrieve land surface temperature. The VNIR system characterizes vegetation and pre-fire fuel conditions. Together they yield both operational products for fire management, such as fire perimeter and hotspot location, and science-grade data products for wildfire and ecosystem modeling, including NDVI, evapotranspiration (ET), and the evaporative stress index (ESI).
In summer 2026, Hot Spot is scheduled to complete up to 20 wildfire imaging flights. A subset will be flown in coordination with NASA FireSense and INSPYRE activities, enabling co-collection with airborne platforms for calibration, validation, and intercomparison of LWIR and VNIR datasets, allowing evaluation of the retrievals against established research-grade instruments. At this meeting, we will present preliminary results, example data products, and lessons learned from the 2026 campaign, and we will discuss the readiness and applicability of stratospheric thermal imaging for operational wildfire response and for broader earth science.