By Ed Ballard
A flock of companies sent satellites into space in recent years promising to beam down crucial new insights into the Earth's fast-changing climate. But many are increasingly focused on scanning warzones.
"Most of the demand right now -- I would say probably two thirds, maybe more -- is defense-related," said Max Gulde, chief executive of German satellite startup Constellr.
Constellr operates two thermal-imaging satellites that can take the temperature of any 30-square-meter spot on the planet. Potential wartime applications include tracking ships at night and observing rocket launches.
This isn't what Gulde, a former experimental physicist, initially intended.
He spent a decade developing the technology with the aim of letting farmers assess how heat is affecting their crops and helping city planners protect people from heat waves. Constellr has signed up customers for those products, but defense-related demand is rising faster.
This story is playing out across this industry. Regardless of the benefits, climate-related satellite data has an uncertain financial return for many potential customers, whether they are insurers forecasting catastrophe losses, utilities gauging wildfire risks or commodity companies predicting the next harvest. Defense ministries are more ready to pay up.
San Francisco-based satellite operator Planet Labs espouses a mission "to accelerate humanity toward a more sustainable, secure, and prosperous world by illuminating environmental and social change." Defense-and-intelligence sales accounted for all of its revenue growth over the past two years.
Another startup, ICEYE, said when it closed a 2020 funding round that climate change was driving "a critical immediate need for real-time information."
Defense applications weren't mentioned then. They were in focus last week when ICEYE, which uses microwave pulses to create high-resolution satellite images, touted a roughly $1.7 billion order backlog. It said the growth reflected "sustained sovereign intelligence demand and long-term national security priorities."
For Aravind Ravichandran of TerraWatch Space, a firm that advises companies on how to harness satellite data, "2025 was the year the industry stopped pretending."
That isn't to say satellite companies have given up on climate-related data -- they continue to sign contracts and develop climate-related products. But their financial prospects look pegged to defense.
This shift has been driven by the war in Ukraine and President Trump's pressure on U.S. allies to increase military budgets. But satellite operators were also pinning their hopes on big new markets for climate-related data that haven't yet emerged, Ravichandran said.
That could change. The world isn't getting any colder. But Ravichandran sees a chance that satellite companies get sidetracked and develop products aimed at deep-pocketed defense customers at the expense of other opportunities.
Gulde at Constellr is anxious to avoid that.
In the long term, he said, "the biggest problem we have is still climate change."
He says defense sales will help fund more satellite launches, lower costs and open up new markets. Devoting even a fraction of the company's capacity to measuring crop health, he reasons, could save farmers a lot of water and benefit food security -- a payoff for time spent scanning the Strait of Hormuz.
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Today's email was written by Ed Ballard in London. Contact him at ed.ballard@wsj.com. Contact the team at climate@wsj.com.
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March 19, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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