# Kuva Space Copernicus Pilot Lifts Land-Cover Accuracy to Nearly 70%

> Kuva Space's Copernicus pilot combined Hyperfield-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery to reach nearly 70% land-cover accuracy across five European test areas.

- Published: 2026-10-28T14:39:23+00:00
- Section: Research & Clinical Trials
- Author: News Desk
- URL: https://newsforagent.com/news/2026-10-28/kuva-space-copernicus-land-cover-pilot
- Source: [news.cision.com](https://news.cision.com/san-francisco-oy/r/kuva-space-pilot-shows-hyperspectral-data-can-sharpen-europe-s-land-cover-maps,c4416826)

## Key takeaways

- Kuva Space completed a Copernicus Contributing Missions pilot that combined Hyperfield-1 hyperspectral imagery with Sentinel-2 data across five European test areas.
- The combined model reached nearly 70% overall accuracy, against 68.1% for Hyperfield-1 alone, 68.0% for Sentinel-2 alone and 66.7% for ESA WorldCover-v200.
- Hyperfield-1 collected 98 hyperspectral images covering roughly 90,000 km² between June 2025 and May 2026, and Kuva Space plans subdaily global coverage by the end of 2030.

[Kuva Space](https://akta.pro/company-profiles/0000e7t/kuva-space) completed a Copernicus Contributing Missions pilot that combined its Hyperfield-1 hyperspectral imagery with Sentinel-2 data and reached nearly 70% overall accuracy in land-cover classification, the company said in a [news.cision.com](https://news.cision.com/san-francisco-oy/r/kuva-space-pilot-shows-hyperspectral-data-can-sharpen-europe-s-land-cover-maps,c4416826) announcement on October 28, 2026. The Finnish company builds hyperspectral Earth-observation satellites and AI-powered analytics.

## How the Hyperfield-1 Pilot Was Run

The study combined imagery from Kuva Space's Hyperfield-1 satellites with Sentinel-2 data and an AI-based classification model. In a targeted validation against land cover manually mapped from up-to-date Very High Resolution imagery in three areas, the combined model reached nearly 70% overall accuracy, against about 68% for either source alone (68.1% for Hyperfield-1 and 68.0% for Sentinel-2) and 66.7% for ESA WorldCover-v200 over the same areas.

Hyperfield-1 collected 98 hyperspectral images covering roughly 90,000 km² across five test areas in Greece, Romania, France, the UK and Russia between June 2025 and May 2026. Both satellites met the study's major data-quality targets, with mean surface-reflectance error of 2.4% for HF-1A and 3.0% for HF-1B against RadCalNet calibration sites, within a target of below 10%. The automated processing pipeline can produce analytics outputs in under 10 minutes once data reaches the ground station.

"We already have the satellite imagery. The challenge is getting enough information from it to see what's actually changing on the ground," said Jarkko Antila, CEO of Kuva Space. "This pilot shows that hyperspectral data can make the Earth-observation systems governments rely on more precise, helping them distinguish smaller and subtler differences across very large areas."

## Kuva Space's Funding and Constellation Plans

According to akta.pro [company records](https://akta.pro/company-data), Kuva Space has raised €40 million in total funding disclosed to date, with a recent tranche earmarked for European dual-use market expansion and a 100-satellite constellation buildout by 2030. The same records list a target of 1-2 hours from satellite capture to actionable intelligence. The company is building its next six Hyperfield satellites, and Tuomas Tikka, its Chief Strategy Officer, said 70+ Hyperfield satellites in orbit by the end of the decade would improve accuracy and temporal coverage of land-cover mapping.

## Earlier Kuva Space Hyperspectral Work

In September 2026, Payloadspace reported that Kuva Space released data from a pilot using Hyperfield-1 satellites to monitor illegal poppy farming in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, identifying 8,835 potential poppy fields with 75% accuracy against Sentinel-2's 71%. In August 2026, IHI Corporation and Kuva Space signed an MoU to expand hyperspectral satellite cooperation, evaluating Kuva's constellation capacity and defining requirements for a Japanese sovereign constellation, news.cision.com reported. In July 2026, Arcticstartup reported that Kuva Space was selected as one of eight awardees for NASA's Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition On-Ramp 2 contract, giving its U.S. subsidiary eligibility to compete for task orders in a program valued up to $476 million.

## Kuva Space's Hyperfield-2 Timeline

Kuva Space plans to expand the Hyperfield constellation to provide subdaily global coverage by the end of 2030. Its next-generation Hyperfield-2 satellites will add Short-Wave Infrared sensing and higher-resolution RGB imagery, designed to better separate land-cover types such as snow, built-up areas, bare soils and shrubs.

## Companies in this story

- [Kuva Space company profile](https://akta.pro/company-profiles/0000e7t/kuva-space) · website: https://kuvaspace.com

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