May. If it proves successful, the ESA hopes to be able to market it worldwide. It reports fires directly to the nearest fire station and can help in coordinating the fire-fighting measures locally.
All fire fighters can communicate directly with each other via satellite.
Until now, they did so via conventional radio transmission, which is susceptible to interference during fires. The new system will monitor roughly a million square kilometers of forest. Each year, these forests are the site of some 2,800 fires, half of which are caused by lightning striking, the other half by human activity.