1. SERA presentation day in Tallinn
On Thursday, 20 April 2023, eleven Estonian companies from the defence and aerospace sector, KappaZeta Ltd among them, could promote their unique innovative products and services to 80 top European defence and security executives. There was a presentation day (https://www.facebook.com/ESTDefenceIndustry/) where the Estonian companies met the attendees of an international course SERA (Session Européennee des Responsables d’Armement) for the high rank European defence and security personnel held in Estonia and organised jointly by the Estonian Defence and Aerospace Industry Association and the Estonian Ministry of Defence. We joined the Estonian Defence and Aerospace Industry Association recently. The heightened international security situation has made us want to use our expertise on radar and AI for the benefit of the security of Estonia and the defence capabilities of ours and our allies. While KappaZeta does not currently offer any significant ready-made services for the defence sector, we have the capacity to develop such solutions, and our ideas were well received at the event. Now, we are working to take these ideas forward.
Image: Tauri Tampuu presenting KappaZeta at the SERA presentation day.
Tauri Tampuu, research and development manager
2. Towards Sentinel-1 3D: interesting stories and criticism
KappaZeta is planning a new satellite mission with a goal to make Sentinel-1 data 3-dimensional and to provide an excellent data source to measure forest biomass at global level with unprecedented accuracy and frequency. The following paragraphs are an exerpt from our CEO Kaupo Voormansik’s blog post ”A story of starting a satellite mission”.
One of the most interesting critical remarks came from a good colleague: „Your undertaking has too much of a community feel to it.“ I would say that’s completely intentional. KappaZeta is a do-good company with a mission and that’s no secret. We’re convinced that an open approach will be successful, as opposed to being afraid, trying to hide, building walls wherever possible, keeping our work and plans a secret. The Copernicus programme, which the new mission would complement, is a success largely thanks to its open philosophy.
All interested parties need to know that the door for discussing cooperation is open, be that for benefitting from the planned data or for collaborating on satellite development. Experience from the first Estonian satellite project ESTCube-1 taught me many lessons that led to this conclusion. I’m glad that I never started criticising the new „aliens“ who had just joined the team and didn’t seem very reliable at first sight. Many of them later surprised the entire team, proving to be thorough and careful engineers that could always be relied upon. The second lesson was that each person plays their own role and not every person has to be very profoundly involved in development. For example, one ESTCube-1 member never stood out with great engineering results but brought a friend to the team who became one of the core developers. All of this demonstrates the power of community, which is enormous. Everyone needs to feel welcome to join and contribute. This is especially important in the beginning, when the entire competence to complete a mission doesn’t already exist within the team.
More criticism on the same note: „It doesn’t matter that you have a lot of friends!“ It matters tremendously! One person alone, however smart, and capable, could not get a lot done. Looking at the lively and supportive cooperation between Estonian startups, it seems that most people have understood this already long ago. From our experiences, we can thank the SuperAngel accelerator, ESA BIC Estonia, the Estonian Founders Society, and the Estonian Space Office.
To sum all of this up — there’s still a lot of work ahead, but there aren’t any fundamental obstacles preventing the mission from becoming a reality. The only thing that might make us reconsider our plans, would be if a better alternative technology were to appear. As long as our planned mission (bistatic SAR interferometry using accompanying satellites) provides the best combination of high accuracy, global coverage, and a reasonable price for measuring the global forest biomass, we will be working onwards.
Today, we have verbal agreements to raise 2,35 million euros in investments. Hopefully, we can publish official news about it soon. I extend my sincere gratitude to all our team members, advisors, the future investors, and the constructive critics.
Kaupo Voormansik, CEO
