Elodie Collins 
The U.S. Space Force has selected Muon Space to develop a dual-use space-based environmental monitoring, or SBEM, capability for the Department of Defense.
The company said Wednesday that it secured a Small Business Innovation Research Phase III other transaction authority agreement valued at $44.6 million from the Space Systems Command to build a three-satellite on-orbit prototype demonstrator.
What Is Space Force’s SBEM Program
The Joint Requirements Oversight Council, which evaluates service-level needs, identified the two highest priorities of the SBEM mission: cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. According to Muon, the two capabilities will improve mission planning and execution in contested environments, where weather data may be unavailable or compromised.
What Muon Will Deliver
The new agreement builds upon Muon’s earlier work on the FireSat Protoflight, a multispectral infrared technology for global wildfire monitoring and detection. FireSat Protoflight lifted off on a SpaceX rocket in March as part of the Transporter-13 mission and has already sent back images of thermal activities on the ground.
“This mission demonstrates the power of dual-use design – we’re not just adapting existing technology, we’re creating a platform that excels at both missions simultaneously,” commented Jonny Dyer, CEO of Muon. “By building on our commercial FireSat foundation, we can deliver operational value immediately while proving scalability for future defense missions.”
The company received an SBIR Phase II contract in December 2024 to evolve Quickbeam, its multispectral infrared instrument that will be installed on the upcoming FireSat-SBEM Phase III satellites. Muon will deploy three satellites to demonstrate its capability to provide the DOD with SBEM.
