An article in the New York Times discusses the impact of wildfire smoke in https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/opinion/wildfires-smoke-pollution-distance.html. You need to be a subscriber to read the full article.
XPRIZE Wildfire
The XPRIZE Foundation launched a $11M new 4-year competition to innovate firefighting technologies that will end destructive wildfires https://www.xprize.org/prizes/wildfire. The competition is designed to synergistically transform how fires are managed and fought across two tracks: 1: $5M Autonomous Wildfire Response Track 2: $5M Space-Based Wildfire Detection and Intelligence Track
Wildland fire recommendations
Tim Ball and Carl Pennypacker contributed to the Wildland Fire Recommendations by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). The full report can be seen at https://fas.org/wildland-fire-recommendations/
Requests for Information sent
The team sent Requests for Information to potential industry partners for building the FUEGO instrument and/or the host satellite.
Presentation at Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society
Team member Chaincy Kuo gave a presentation about FUEGO at the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society with the title “Simulating the observation of wildfires with geostationary instruments”.
85% of California’s rural land at high wildfire risk
A new report from California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) has revealed 85% of rural and unincorporated land in the state is in a high or very high danger zone for wildfires. More info reported by CNN here.
Industry Conference Call
The FUEGO team has scheduled a pre-proposal conference call with all prospective industry partners to discuss specifics and requirements for the proposals.
Request for Proposal Prepared
The FUEGO team has prepared an official Request for Proposal that will be sent out to potential industry partners for building the FUEGO instrument and/or the hosting spacecraft.