Team Snuffed Wants to Deploy Satellites to Watch the West

It sounds like a science fiction movie, but a group of Northen Arizona neighbors and associates are as serious as a fast-moving wildfire about their plan to put 90 satellites in space to watch the West and detect an ignition larger than a campfire. “We can buy a spacecraft from a commercial vendor and SpaceX does launches all the time,” said David Trilling, a professor and chair of the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science at Northern Arizona University.

This Flagstaff team, assembled by aerospace engineer Cody Hartman, has been selected to advance to the semifinals in the Space-based Detection and Intelligence Track of the XPRIZE Wildfire competition. XPRIZE is a non-profit organization that creates public contests intended to encourage technological development. The prize money is $11 million. Trilling, who is leading the team on this track, says $3 to $5 million is enough to build, launch and test one satellite. “You learn this way, before you build 100 of them.”

Hartman recalls the summer of 2022, when a Forest Service employee with a map knocked on his door. “She was advising neighbors in the Cheshire neighborhood of the post-wildfire flood risk with the upcoming monsoon season and how many sandbags we would need.”

Hartman says he was well aware of the Pipeline Fire, the blaze that burned 26,532 acres in late spring, but didn’t understand the watershed. “She said we would have two feet of water at our front door if a thunderstorm happened here. Everything she predicted came true, but we had enough planning time to dig a ditch and berm it up to avoid water coming into our home.”

Hartman began talking with his neighbors, Flagstaff Fire Captain Mike Felts and Captain Mike Allan, about how to stop devastating wildfires and post-wildfire flooding that Flagstaff has become familiar with. “The Pipeline got started the night before it took off. It smoldered through the evening and the next morning it escalated and ripped up the side of the mountain,” he said. “Sensors would have found that.”

That problem of catastrophic wildfires was still on Hartman’s mind when his plane was delayed at Sky Harbor Airport last fall. Also holding a ticket for that same delayed flight to Flagstaff was Professor Trilling. He and Cody had been neighbors years ago, and with nowhere to go, they sat down and devised a plan. “By the time we were back in Flagstaff we pretty much had a proposal ready to submit to XPRIZE,” said Trilling.

The local team of about 25 members formed, with engineers, fire managers, astronomers, entrepreneurs and professors all bringing needed expertise to support the plan. The idea was submitted in February. Last month, Snuffed received approval to stay in the XPRIZE competition to detect a fire from space within one minute of its ignition, with constant surveillance over areas the size of a state or small country. Snuffed is one of 20 teams in the semifinals and the only one registered in Arizona.

“It’s energizing to be able to come together as a team and attempt to do something meaningful, not only for our community, but for others around the world who are also facing the existential threat of wildfires,” said Hartman.

Team member Alexander Shenkin, Ph.D., assistant research professor of ecoinformatics at NAU, noted that, “catching ignitions extremely early, before they become destructive wildfires, is key to controlling the catastrophic losses we’ve seen too often of late. Providing this data to authorities in a decision-making dashboard so they can quickly decide whether to snuff it out or let it burn as a healthy ecosystem process would be a complete game-changer.”

To change the game, Team Snuffed proposes launching a constellation of 90 small satellites (cubesats) into low-Earth orbit. Each heat-seeking eye in the sky would orbit every 90 minutes, which means that satellite is passing over a specific location every minute. The satellites would be equipped with the VISIONS (VISible and Infrared ObservatioN System) camera, which has already been developed and built by NAU students for the upcoming NASA EscaPADE mission to Mars. The network of satellites would offer continuous monitoring of a swath that includes Flagstaff, areas near the California/Nevada border, the Pacific Northwest, western Canada and Alaska – all areas that have been significantly impacted by wildfires in the past few years.

The cost to implement our plan is estimated at about $100 million. “Of course, that’s a lot of money,” said Trilling, “but it’s a fraction of the billions of dollars in annual costs spent for fighting fires, paying insurance, restoring damaged and destroyed structures, and not to mention the irreplaceable cost of lives lost. This is a relatively tiny investment for an enormous savings.”

According to a news release from the U. S. Department of the Interior, more than $4.2 billion has been allocated to the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture in 2024 for wildland fire and hazardous fuels management.

The second part of the competition is Track B: Autonomous Wildfire Response. Teams have 10 minutes to autonomously detect and suppress a high-risk fire in a 1,000 kilometer environmentally challenging area, leaving any decoy fires untouched.

“This part of the competition drew me in as an aerospace engineer,” said Hartman, who does concept development in his business, Hartbeat Engineering, bringing ideas from the white board to prototype.   

Team Snuffed chose 23 square miles around the San Francisco Peaks for Track B, being led by Felts. “The heartbreaking truth right now is it takes about two hours for a human to get to a fire reported to dispatch,” said Hartman. “On a high-risk, high-wind day, two hours is too late, so our challenge is to find it quickly, get there quickly, and effectively put out a bonfire.”

The team is now working on a completely automated plan of attack, using drones and 20 gallons of fire suppressant. The winner(s) of Track B will be announced in August.

For both tracks, Hartman and Trilling say the technology exists and the expertise is in the community. “I do think our projects will stand out because of the amount of fire knowledge we have on the team,” said Hartman.

Meanwhile, Felts pitched Snuffed’s wildfire technology concepts at the Flagstaff Innovate Waste Challenge in May. The team won first place and $15,000 toward the development of their innovations.

“I am both excited and inspired by the overwhelming interest and support our community has shown for our initiative to autonomously detect and suppress wildfires,” said Hartman. “The old saying goes, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ In our journey, it will certainly take the entire community to help our team cross the finish line in this four-year global XPRIZE Wildfire competition.”

“Both [Track A and Track B] are great projects, whether or not they win in the XPRIZE finals. However, with $100 million, we could start the tech part for Track A tomorrow,” said Trilling, as Arizona begins another wildfire season. QCBN

By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN

Photo by V. Ronnie Tierney, Fresh Focuses Photography: The Flagstaff Snuffed team includes executive coach and strategic advisor Jason Field, who is also the past president and CEO of W. L. Gore & Associates; Flagstaff Fire Captain Mike Felts; NAU Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science Chair David Trilling; and Cody Hartman, owner of Hartbeat Engineering.