Later on Monday, a cutting-edge British satellite that will map the heat signature of buildings will launch into orbit.
The goal is to draw attention to the homes that are wasting energy and could use more insulation.
The comparatively small spacecraft, appropriately dubbed HotSat-1, will be run by London-based startup Satellite Vu.
Its infrared sensor was created with funding from the European and UK space agencies.
At 14:14 PDT (22:14 BST), HotSat-1 is scheduled to blast off aboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
It will be able to see individual roof tops and walls while flying at a 500km (311 miles) altitude.
With the vast majority of its homes constructed before 1970, the UK has some of the least efficient housing stock in all of Europe.
If many of these buildings could be retrofitted, doing so would reduce fuel costs for homeowners while also assisting the nation in achieving its goal of being climate neutral by 2050.
"There is grant money there to improve insulation, but for councils and utilities it's difficult to know where to apply it," said Anthony Baker, CEO of Satellite Vu. "With citywide data, we'll be able to quickly show you the 20 percent of buildings that are the worst. We can check to make sure the upgrades were completed successfully after they are complete, he added, according to BBC News.
As a constellation of "thermometers in the sky," the company intends to launch eight satellites.
Users who intend to use the thermal data in various ways both domestically and abroad have already made pre-launch commitments worth £100 million.
HotSat-1 should quickly locate the buildings and open areas that aggravate the so-called urban heat island effect in addition to describing the heat profiles of buildings. Large parking lots at shopping malls are among them, which raise the temperature in towns and cities. Planners could learn where to place trees for environmental cooling.
By demonstrating how temperatures fluctuate over time in a scene, the data will also offer intelligence to the financial and insurance industries, as well as the military. For instance, a factory's heat signature alone can be used to estimate the output volume and type.
Another application should be pollution monitoring. A sign that something is wrong might be sudden changes in the temperature of the river water.
The data from HotSat-1 will be available to Ordnance Survey (OS), the nation's mapping organization in the United Kingdom.
It has already tested the sensor by having it fly over the London Borough of Ealing. Since an aircraft is obviously much closer to the ground than a satellite, the data had to be de-resolved in order to more accurately simulate the appearance of the space information.
However, it has given OS a head start on what to anticipate. .
Few people have a degree in spectral analysis, which makes Earth observation extremely powerful but also challenging to understand and use, according to OS's Donna Lyndsay. "But as soon as you put that information on one of our maps, people get it—they understand that it's hotter here than there. We will therefore use that early discovery of Satellite Vu data, combine it with our intelligence, and test it out first on our customers. " .
Guildford-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. created the HotSat-1 satellite.
The Carbonite (named after the made-up substance that was used to freeze Han Solo in the film The Empire Strikes Back) low-cost bus, or chassis, serves as the spacecraft's main structural support.
According to SSTL engineer Ellie Sargeaunt, "It's been a fun project to work on, very fast-paced.". .
For the satellite, we didn't properly begin integrating modules until January or February. Now that a second satellite is being produced, it will be launched the following year. Hopefully, there will be six more after that. " .
