Spiral Blue Selects Arlula to Help Scale Sovereign Space LiDAR Mission

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 14 May 2026
Arlula, the Australian company building Earth Observation Data Infrastructure (EODI) for the space and defence sectors, today announced that Spiral Blue, a leader in space based LiDAR and edge computing has selected Arlula’s Sales Engine platform to be the distribution layer in its upcoming constellation.

The partnership provides Spiral Blue’s planned Teal LiDAR constellation with an end to end sovereign ground segment layer, enabling defence and enterprise customers to securely discover and access decision-grade LiDAR data and task the constellation through a single trusted interface. The capability is expected to support a growing range of defence and intelligence applications including terrain intelligence, infrastructure monitoring, maritime surveillance, targeting support, and battle-space awareness. 

Spiral Blue is one of Australia’s most advanced sovereign space technology companies, having already deployed ten NVIDIA-powered edge computing systems in orbit across customer and partner missions. Earlier this year, the company exported Australia’s first defence-focused space LiDAR capability to a UK partner and was awarded a $3 million CRC-P grant to develop the world’s first AI-enabled LiDAR satellite. 

The company is also collaborating with industry and research partners on advanced defence applications, including hypersonic missile defence initiatives under the iLAuNCH Trailblazer program.

Spiral Blue’s Teal LiDAR constellation is designed to deliver highly accurate three-dimensional Earth observation data with near real-time revisit capability as the constellation scales.

Sales Engine, Arlula's data distribution and constellation management layer, provides Spiral Blue a white-labelled portal for discovery, tasking, ordering, and delivery, so the team can stay focused on sensor and constellation development instead of building commerce infrastructure.

The partnership lands at a moment of intensifying Australian and allied investment in sovereign space capability. Under AUKUS Pillar Two and adjacent programs, Australian and allied defence customers are seeking near real time access to sovereign-controlled commercial GEOINT data, particularly for terrain intelligence, change detection, and battle-space awareness applications where LiDAR offers structural advantages over passive imagery.

“Building advanced LiDAR satellites is challenging enough without also building the infrastructure to distribute the data. Sales Engine gives our customers a trusted sovereign platform to access Spiral Blue data while our team stays focused on deploying our Teal constellation and delivering high-quality insights for defence, government, and commercial users.”

— Taofiq Huq CEO Spiral Blue 

Spiral Blue will begin to expand its data catalog, which currently distributes Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery, progressively incorporating open source LiDAR data sources in the lead up to the launch of their fixed-wing drone LiDAR program over New South Wales, followed by space-derived LiDAR products as the Teal constellation comes online.

“Spiral Blue is exactly the kind of operator Sales Engine was built for. Their LiDAR products can reach customers from day one of operations, without their engineers being pulled into building bespoke commerce infrastructure.”

— Sebastian Chaoui CEO Arlula

Sales Engine is live for Spiral Blue today, and the two companies will expand the deployment in step with Spiral Blue’s product roadmap. 

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