On March 13, 2025, GRASP was selected as one of the three finalists in the ESA Φ-lab Grand Marathon, held during the Hello Tomorrow Summit in Paris. The event, organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) Φ-lab in collaboration with Save the Children Italia, highlighted the potential of Earth Observation to address pressing environmental and health challenges.
At the event, GRASP presented AirCare, its beta platform for public health air quality decision-making. Developed from the first PM2.5 maps produced within the SMART-AQ project, AirCare is designed to deliver actionable insights on aerosol phenomena from space, with a specific focus on the role of ultrafine particles in human health.
We congratulate the selected projects GEOMATYS and Planetixx and thank ESA Φ-lab and the organizing team from Hello Tomorrow for supporting science-driven innovation.
About AirCare
Air pollution is a leading cause of nearly 7 million premature deaths annually, with PM0.1 and PM2.5 ultrafine particles posing the greatest health risks. These microscopic pollutants penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, contributing to respiratory, cardiovascular and cognitive diseases. To monitor these aerosols, current monitoring systems are commonly used but struggle to accurately estimate their concentrations and spatial distribution due to limitations in public data models and ground-based sensors.
GRASP believes that Earth Observation has the answer to address these gaps. To do so, we integrate satellite data from GRASP’s GAPMAP constellation, ground-based instruments, and public satellite data. Thanks to over 30 years of development on the GRASP algorithm, we are able to merge data from multiple data sources, providing high-quality aerosol products, global-scale estimations of PM0.1 and PM2.5, essential for public health policies and pollution mitigation.
AirCare aims to be a complementary branch from the developments carried out from the SMART-AQ project. This project, which started in September 2024, is aimed at providing actionable PM2.5–PM10 data from Space to mining, emitting industries and municipalities. AirCare, on his side, focuses on PM0.1 and the Health sector, leveraging from SMART-AQ developments, hence achieving economies of scale to optimize the profitability of the project. The purpose is to generate a service featuring interactive visualization tools, data integration APIs, and actionable real-time alerts for critical pollution events.
Initially, this PM0.1 product uses public satellite data for a rapid minimum viable product (MVP). Later, it will be integrating GAPMAP’s proprietary multi-angle polarimetric (MAP) data for superior accuracy and coverage. To do so, we account with the support of municipalities customers from the SMART-AQ project, who will provide the developments down the value chain for Health institutions. In this regard, the customer segment and key resources proposed in the framework of the call is mentioned hereafter as ‘Municipalities & Health’.
AirCare is a crucial project aligning with the company’s mission, which is leveraging our scientific and Space capabilities to democratize access to a full-diagnosis highly reliable aerosols monitoring. With the first MVP PM2.5 developments generated, we have the needed resources, the team and the plan to get to PM0.1.
