How ICEYE moved from mapping the Arctic to war surveillance

By Laurel Colless August 18, 2025
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In March 2025, when the Trump administration abruptly paused U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine, Finland’s ICEYE kept its radar eyes trained on the battlefields. Using its synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation, which is able to see through cloud cover and darkness, ICEYE was able to continue supporting Ukrainian defense forces in identifying scores of strategic military targets.

At that time, it was widely reported that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, had taken over 4,700 radar images of enemy positions, and about 38 percent of them were used to prepare attacks on enemy positions. By June, SAR imagery from ICEYE and other commercial providers was helping prepare and confirm the results of surprise cross-border strikes, such as “Operation Spiderweb,” which damaged or destroyed multiple bombers at the Russian Belaya and Olenya airfields.

A satellite view shows military aircraft, some sitting destroyed, at the Belaya air base, near Stepnoy, Irkutsk region, Russia, June 4, 2025, after Ukraine launched a drone attack, dubbed “Operation Spider’s Web”, targeting Russian strategic bombers during Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. 2025 Planet Labs PBC/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT

Why ICEYE stands out

What differentiates ICEYE is not the radar technology itself — synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been around for some years. It’s the way it has been miniaturized to fit on smaller, lighter, low-cost satellites. “The breakthrough,” says Tero Vauraste, an ICEYE senior adviser and veteran icebreaker executive, “was putting SAR into much smaller satellites, which means you can build and launch them faster and cheaper, and get more of them in orbit for constant coverage.” Other competitors have  now joined the market, but ICEYE was the first to make SAR small enough to fit on today’s commercial mini-SAR constellations.

    ICEYE over Scandinavia Photo: ICEYE

    How it all began

    Development started in 2012, when Aalto University students, Rafal Modrzewski (CEO) and Pekka Laurila (Chief Strategy Officer), approached Vauraste at an Arctic conference where he was speaking about icebreaker technology. Vauraste offered informal advice on how to approach customers and investors, eventually helping them secure their first client, Canada’s Imperial Oil, for a project mapping sea ice in the Bay of Bothnia.

    The first pilot went ahead in 2015 using an Aalto University aircraft to test the radar, and track how ice channels created by icebreakers developed and stayed in place. “It was groundbreaking,” Vauraste recalls. “For the first time, we could see detailed ice conditions regardless of cloud cover or darkness.” The success of that trial proved the technology could deliver actionable data in the most challenging Arctic conditions.

    Initially the tech was put to work in these kinds of private contracts as well as a host of civil and environmental tasks. From tracking sea ice and guiding Finnish icebreakers, to monitoring floods, wildfires and working with Iceland to measure volcanic activity. ICEYE is even being deployed as far afield as Brazil to work on deforestation surveillance.

    ICEYE Founding CEO Rafal Modrzewski inspecting hardware Photo: Iceye

    Seeing behind the weather

    “These aren’t photographs,” Vauraste explains. “They’re radio waves sent to the surface of the Earth, with a satellite measuring how long they take to return and where they are on the wave. From that, we can process an image that shows what’s there and how it’s changing, even in snow, rain, fog or other extreme weather conditions.”

    By combining this data with meteorological models and AI analysis, ICEYE can estimate flood depths, track wildfire spread, and monitor soil movement before and during eruptions, right down to mapping lava flows. In forestry, the same method can show subtle shifts in real time, giving authorities a head start in detecting illegal logging.

    Shift to defense and security

    But now, with geopolitical tensions sharpening, and demand growing for independent European defence intelligence, Vauraste sees the company’s balance of work shifting, with defence and security now making up the largest share of revenues.

    Since Finland joined NATO, companies like ICEYE have begun feeding their data into alliance initiatives such as Allied Persistent Surveillance from Space, which pool imagery from member states and commercial providers to strengthen shared intelligence.

    Building on that role, in June, ICEYE announced a EUR 250 million investment programme to scale up production and accelerate R&D, backed by EUR 41.1 million from Business Finland, which was one of the agency’s largest ever funding decisions.

    ICEYE staff member assembling a satellite. Photo: ICEYE

    Later in the month, ICEYE signed a Letter of Intent with Finland’s Ministry of Defence to develop a national satellite surveillance system, in a move that strengthens Finland’s position as a global leader in space-based intelligence.

    At the EU level, ICEYE is also working closely with the European Space Agency through the Copernicus program, supplying imagery to environmental and security services across Europe. For ICEYE, it’s both a commercial opportunity and part of a wider push to strengthen Europe’s own capabilities in space-based intelligence

    “The Trump administration has sent us a clear message,” Vauraste says. “Europe has to stand on its own feet. And that creates opportunities for European players like us.”