SatVu Thermal Camera Saw Inside a Cuban Refinery Before Havana Announced It Was Running

When the Strait of Hormuz closed in April, traders needed to know which refineries were still running and at what capacity. The question was whether commercial satellite thermal imaging could deliver that answer — or whether a British startup's first-light imagery was primarily a investor narrative dressed up as operational intelligence.

SatVu released first-light imagery from its HotSat-2 satellite May 7, showing the Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat — the world's largest refinery complex — operating at reduced capacity during the disruption. Captured April 26, the image arrived the same day the IEA noted Asian refineries had cut runs by roughly 6 million barrels per day. Images also showed a Cuban crude oil facility that had restarted thermal operations two days before Havana announced it publicly, and thermal signatures at the Gorgon LNG development off the coast of Western Australia. HotSat-2 launched March 30 aboard a SpaceX Transporter-16 rideshare from Vandenberg. It is the second thermal imaging satellite SatVu has placed in orbit, following a debut that ended in failure.

"We tell you if something is active," CEO Anthony Baker told SpaceNews last year. That distinction — between seeing the outside of a building and knowing whether anything is happening inside it — is the core commercial pitch SatVu has been building toward since the company's founding in 2016.

HotSat-1 operated for six months before an issue with a power circuit in its camera ended service in December 2023. Baker said the fault was in the hardware, not SatVu's intellectual property. "We have full confidence that the camera is as good as we said it was," he said at the time, pointing to earlier tests conducted from aircraft. The satellite was fully insured; SatVu did not disclose the amount. It had been serving customers including Japan Space Imaging Corporation before it failed.

The failure forced SatVu to rebuild momentum. The company had ordered HotSat-2 from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. in 2022 but placed it on hold — initially because of a funding delay, then to assess HotSat-1's orbital performance. The February 2026 funding round, anchored by the NATO Innovation Fund and including the British Business Bank, Space Frontiers Fund II, and Presto Tech Horizons, brought SatVu's total equity to £60 million ($80 million). The NIF, a venture fund backed by 24 NATO member nations, is among the backers.

NIF's involvement signals something specific: the defense and intelligence community has had access to thermal satellite data for years, but it is highly classified. SatVu's proposition is a version that is shareable — commercially available, at a resolution good enough to be operationally useful. "SatVu was founded to give governments access to intelligence they cannot access elsewhere," Baker said in the Reuters report announcing the funding. "High-resolution thermal imagery from space reveals activity that is otherwise invisible — day and night — including heat signatures associated with operations inside and around buildings and critical infrastructure."

The Strait of Hormuz crisis gives that pitch an immediate stress test. The waterway carries roughly 20% of global oil supplies, and its partial closure in April sent shockwaves through commodity markets. Energy traders, sanctions monitors, and intelligence agencies all have a need for independent verification of facility-level activity. SatVu captured Jamnagar operating at reduced capacity on April 26 — the same day the IEA noted that refineries in Asia had cut runs by around 6 million barrels per day in response to the disruption. Whether SatVu can reliably deliver that kind of operational intelligence at commercial scale is the open question.

The satellite uses mid-wave infrared sensors to capture thermal imagery at 3.5-meter resolution — sufficient to distinguish individual features inside industrial facilities, including generators, flare stacks, and processing units. SatVu says this is sufficient to detect heat signatures from industrial activity inside and around facilities. SSTL built HotSat-2 on its DarkCarb bus, a compact platform derived from the Carbonite series. The design allows iterative upgrades between satellite builds — HotSat-3 is scheduled to launch on another SpaceX Transporter rideshare before the end of 2026, and SatVu ultimately plans a nine-satellite constellation to increase revisit rates and capture facilities at multiple times of day.

With two satellites in orbit, Baker said last year, SatVu would be able to generate enough annual recurring revenue by mid-2026 to qualify for a growth funding round that would finance an additional seven spacecraft. The competitive field includes OroraTech and constellr of Germany, Aistech and Satlantis of Spain, Washington-based Hydrosat, and Colorado-based Albedo — all betting that commercial thermal intelligence has a market beyond defense procurement.

The Cuba image is the one SatVu is most explicit about: the Hermanos Díaz refinery thermal signature from April 25, two days before the Cuban government announced the restart of domestic crude refinement in the official newspaper Granma. "This new data layer enables a higher level of operational understanding and validation: confirming what is running, when, and at what intensity," CTO Scott Herman said in a statement. Whether SatVu can turn that kind of insight into recurring commercial revenue is what HotSat-2 has to prove now.

HotSat-2 is operational. The market is paying attention.