Frequently Asked
Questions

SWIR operates in the 1,000–1,750nm wavelength range, a spectral band that penetrates haze, smoke, dust, and atmospheric moisture where conventional optical sensors fail. For defence, this matters because modern ISR increasingly operates in degraded, denied, and deceptive environments — precisely the conditions where decision confidence is most critical. SWIR provides a confirmation and discrimination layer that reduces uncertainty at key stages of the intelligence cycle, identifying camouflaged assets, detecting material signatures, and maintaining surveillance performance when visible-band collection is denied. It complements — rather than replaces — optical, SAR, and thermal ISR.

Customers receive priority tasking rights over their designated Areas of Interest (AOIs). Customer-directed scheduling means your national priorities are served without dependence on third-party commercial tasking queues or allied intermediaries. You control what gets imaged, when, and where — the tasking authority sits with you, not with a foreign operator or commercial provider.

Yes. SWIRSAT delivers analytics-ready data products aligned to established Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (PED) workflows. Data is delivered in GeoTIFF and STAC formats with STAC JSON metadata, and is compliant with MAJIIC2 and standard GIS formats. Products span Level 1B through to CEOS ARD (Level 2A), enabling direct ingestion into existing exploitation environments. Processing scripts can also be deployed on customer-controlled infrastructure, so data never needs to leave your environment.

SWIRSAT’s differentiators enables five mission types at operational scale that conventional optical sensors cannot reliably support: maritime domain awareness through haze and sea mist via wake signatures and surface reflectance; counter-concealment, detecting camouflaged vehicles, positions, and concealed assets; missile indication and warning, identifying propellant, launch preparation, and thermal signatures; post-strike battle damage assessment through residual smoke when optical collection is denied; and infrastructure change detection, identifying surface construction and material changes in contested or denied areas.

SWIRSAT-1 and -2 (Q1 2027 launch) deliver a 4–7 day global revisit rate, with daily revisit across the MENA region. As the constellation scales to nine or more satellites, global daily revisit is achieved. Spatial resolution is 1.5m VNIR (0.75m Super HD) and 8m SWIR (4m Super HD), with an 11km swath. The constellation covers 8 VNIR bands and 4 SWIR bands across the 1,000–1,750nm range, with on-orbit AI edge computing to reduce data latency and improve ISR cueing timeliness.

Our next gen SWIRSATs in development achieve sub 1 meter HD resolution, 3 meter native.

SWIRSAT is developed by LatConnect 60 (LC60), an Australian Earth observation company headquartered in Perth, Western Australia. The programme is supported by public funding from the Australian Space Agency and the Government of Western Australia. The programme is Australian-owned end-to-end, with sovereign data delivery options including direct downlink to customer-designated ground stations.

SWIRSAT incorporates controlled access, encrypted data transfer, and protected processing environments. Data can be delivered directly to customer-designated ground stations, and processing scripts are deployable on customer-controlled infrastructure — meaning data never needs to leave the customer’s own environment. The programme is structured to support allied defence data governance frameworks, with no foreign data-sharing caveats or handling restrictions imposed on customer nations. Each customer holds their own data under full sovereign governance