Mission Space, the space weather intelligence company, announced that its ZOHAR payload has been awarded the 2025 Global Tech Award in Space Technology, recognizing its unique position as the only compact, low-power space weather detector with five months of proven flight heritage. Launched earlier this year, ZOHAR-I is a next-generation instrument equipped with spectrometers and Cherenkov detectors to measure electron, alpha particle, and proton energies, as well as proton flux.
Sampling up to 1,000 times per second across 15 parameters, ZOHAR delivers high-quality, real-time insights on radiation and particle activity that are critical for advancing space weather forecasting.
Unlike legacy instruments, ZOHAR was built to be small, efficient, and scalable. Its compact design and low power draw allow it to fly on a wide range of platforms, from cubesats to large satellites. Operated in low Earth orbit by DPhi Space, ZOHAR is now feeding continuous data into Mission Space's proprietary forecasting platform, improving prediction accuracy by more than 200% compared to current models.
"ZOHAR shows that you can have world-class space weather monitoring without the mass and power demands of older systems," said Mary Glaz, CEO of Mission Space. "This payload has already proven itself in orbit, and it's paving the way toward a constellation that will give industries from satellites and aviation to power grids and lunar missions the intelligence they need to operate safely in a dynamic space environment."
The award marks a milestone in Mission Space's roadmap to deploy a constellation of 24 satellites in two orbital planes, enabling persistent monitoring of the Polar Cusp, where solar storms most directly impact Earth. This network will support:
- Satellite operators with drag modeling and anomaly detection.
- Aviation with radiation risk assessments and polar route communication support.
- Power grid operators & nuclear facilities with localized forecasts to mitigate geomagnetically induced currents.
- Frontier technologies with lunar surface charging data and supersonic aviation radiation monitoring.
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