Two engineers from the team that built SphinX, a spectrophotometer that measured the Sun from orbit in 2009, now own the electronics and mechanics of MIRGUARD 614. All five of us co-authored a published far-infrared spectrometer design, and its drone adaptation won an ESA Technology Transfer award. We also take our measurements into the field and check them against the ground.
Below is each of these with a link you can check, what it means for an OEM integrating our payload, and, kept separate, what the current MIRGUARD 614 demonstrator can and cannot claim today.
Space hardware that returned data: SphinX (2009)
SphinX was a Polish-led soft X-ray spectrophotometer built at the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It flew on the CORONAS-PHOTON satellite and observed the Sun through the deep solar minimum of 2009. Its design paper describes silicon PIN detectors covering 0.8–15 keV and a dynamic range two orders of magnitude beyond the GOES reference, verified by extensive ground calibration: SphinX design paper, Solar System Research, 2011.
Mirosław Kowaliński, PhD Eng. (electronics and sensor systems) and Jarosław Bąkała, MSc Eng. (mechanics and optomechanics, today chief engineer at MIRORES) were on the team that built it.
What it means for you: the people who own MIRGUARD’s electronics and housing have taken a spectrometer from design through calibration to operation where nobody could repair it. Tight mass and power budgets and traceable calibration are their normal working conditions.
What it doesn’t mean: orbit is not a drone airframe. SphinX shows how this team works. It says nothing yet about how MIRGUARD behaves under your vibration spectrum.
One design team, from paper to drone
In 2022 we published the concept and design of a far-infrared ore spectrometer: Ciążela et al., Remote Sensing 14, 2799. A feasibility study followed in 2023: Ciążela et al., Frontiers in Earth Science 11, 1190825. Our adaptation of that design for drones took 2nd place in ESA’s 2023 Technology Transfer Competition: project page.
All five MIRORES team members co-authored both papers:
- Jakub Ciążela, PhD: CEO and planetary geologist, links the measurement to the operational question
- Mirosław Kowaliński, PhD Eng.: electronics and sensor systems
- Jarosław Bąkała, MSc Eng.: mechanics, optomechanics, platform fit
- Marta Ciążela, PhD: remote sensing and data fusion
- Natalia Zalewska, PhD: spectroscopy, what a spectral feature can and cannot tell you
What it means for you: fitting a spectrometer to a drone is a problem we have already worked on, with ESA as the judge. The people who designed that instrument are the people building MIRGUARD. There is no handover between a research group and a product team.
What it doesn’t mean: the far-infrared ore spectrometer is a different instrument for a different job. It is evidence of our design method, not a MIRGUARD specification.
Measurements checked against the ground
Jakub and Marta Ciążela run field campaigns that test whether what a sensor reports matches what is physically there. In 2022 that meant the Río Tinto mining area in Spain, with Europlanet research-infrastructure support: EPSC 2022 abstract. Later work mapped an ore district in Chile’s Atacama Desert: preprint.
What it means for you: a spectral answer is only worth its ground truth. A paid PoC on your platform is built the same way: measure, compare with what is really in the scene, write the result down.
What MIRGUARD 614 is today
- A 6–14 μm spectrometer for integration into small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Mass: approx. 1.5 kg including mounting hardware and cables. Dimensions: 140 mm long × Ø115 mm (datasheet, October 2026). The final integration envelope will be confirmed during the platform fit assessment.
- Built to report not only that a spot is hot but what the heat source is, and to cut the false alerts typical of single-channel LWIR.
- Atmospheric auto-calibration accounts for humidity and rain.
- Field trials of the prototype are under way.
- Not yet tested on a UAS: vibration, shock, temperature, EMC, flight stability, bay fit. The product datasheet (8 channels, NETD 50–200 mK, IP54) is published (15 October 2026).
How we work with UAS OEMs
We work OEM-first. You keep the airframe, the end customer and system certification. We bring the spectral payload and carry the sensor-level integration work: mechanical fit, power and data interface. Environmental testing on your platform happens together, inside a paid PoC with a written scope.
Next step
Send us your bay envelope: internal dimensions, available payload mass, power and data interface. DM or r.ledak@mirores.eu. You get a written first-pass fit assessment against the current demonstrator: go, conditional go or no-go, with every open point named. If it is a go, a short technical call with our engineers scopes the PoC.