ASTERRA, an Israeli company that develops technology that makes it possible to identify minerals below the Earth’s surface using satellites, has applied for a patent for its new tech that can discover lithium underground. The company’s main tech was first used to search for new underground sources of water.
Lithium is an element that is both the least dense metal and the least dense solid element. And it has a wide variety of applications. It can be used in medications, and all manner of advanced technologies, and possibly its most important application today is in the making of lithium batteries. This is what makes this news so important.
ASTERRA boasts that its complex artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms extract the signal of lithium concentration underground from satellite-based Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar PolSAR data and can pinpoint locations containing high lithium.
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NASA explains that PolSAR Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, is a type of active data collection where a sensor produces its own energy and then records the amount of that energy reflected back after interacting with the Earth.
This technology creates a way to find lithium before investing in costly exploration with intensive labor, and where it may result in environmental destruction and civil conflicts, says ASTERRA.
“Lithium is the wonder metal at the heart of the global desire to move to cleaner energy with reduced carbon emissions, but the demand exceeds the supply. This causes an almost 500 percent increase in lithium prices and harms the effort to stop global warming,” said Lauren Guy, the founder and chief technology officer of ASTERRA. “Global demand for lithium is insatiable, and the supply crisis is present and significant. ASTERRA can now focus the efforts of companies to mine the metal in a much more efficient and accurate way.”
Founded in 2013 by Lauren Guy, ASTERRA (formerly Utilis) provides geospatial data-driven platform solutions for water utilities, government agencies, and the greater infrastructure industry in the areas of roads, rails, dams, and mines. ASTERRA products and services use Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data from satellites and turn this data into large-scale decision support tools.
The company’s proprietary algorithms and highly educated scientists and engineers are the keys to their mission, to become humanity’s eyes on the Earth. ASTERRA is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring its products to the next level. Since 2017, ASTERRA technology has been used in over 64 countries, saving over 210,830 million gallons of potable water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 134,930 metric tons, and saving 527,070 MWH of energy, all in support of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. ASTERRA is headquartered in Israel with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan.
“The expansion to mining is a natural progression of our ability to use AI analytics to monitor soil moisture underground,” said Elly Perets, CEO of ASTERRA. “It also fulfills our mission to become humanity’s eyes to protect the environment.”