Weather Stream Inc.’s GEMS2-Amethyst commercial meteorological satellite achieved first light and returned atmospheric observations from orbit for the first time.
HotSat-2 returned first light imagery this week.
PoET completed first-light test observations in early April at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
BlackSky is expanding its Gen-3 constellation, and Gen-3 satellite unit four recently delivered first light imagery within hours after launch.
BlackSky has reduced launch-to-first-light time to just hours and the imagery operations window to days for its Gen-3 satellites.
BlackSky delivered first-light imagery from its fourth Gen-3 satellite within hours of launch.
Every BlackSky Gen-3 satellite has demonstrated on-orbit first-light operations on day one after launch.
BlackSky captured first-light imagery from the fourth Gen-3 satellite on March 8, 2026 at 11:31 AM, hours after launch.
QPS Laboratory published the first-light test observation images from its small SAR satellite QPS-SAR No.15 "Sukunami-I" on January 23.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile achieved first light in summer 2025 after more than 25 years of design and over 10 years of construction.
BlackSky received first light imagery from its first Gen-3 satellite in 5 days.
BlackSky obtained first-light imagery from the first Gen-3 satellite within five days of launch.
The first light image from the Planet Pelican-6 satellite was taken on December 4 from an altitude of approximately 519 kilometers.
The Planet Pelican-6 satellite recently captured its first light image of Lhasa Gonggar International Airport in Tibet, China.
The first images from Sentinel-1D are of unprecedented data quality for a 'first light' acquisition.
NASA's ESCAPADE mission achieved 'first light' by capturing images from space on November 21, 2025.
The FireSat constellation was successfully launched in March and obtained its first light images in June.
The first light observations of 4MOST featured the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) and the globular cluster NGC 288.
TeraNet achieved first light in September 2025 at the Yarragadee Geodetic Observatory.
Tanager-1 marked the first anniversary of its first-light images.