This winter, ice on the Great Lakes is expected to impact a maritime economy valued at $35 billion. The wealth of data provided by space-based assets offers a potential lifeline for navigating
This winter, ice on the Great Lakes is expected to impact a maritime economy valued at $35 billion. The wealth of data provided by space-based assets offers a potential lifeline for navigating these frozen waters. However, data alone is not a solution. Without the means to translate raw satellite feeds into actionable intelligence, it remains an untapped resource, a digital haystack without a needle.
In response, and in partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), Michigan recently turned to an unexpected source of innovation: a generation of digital natives. The state tasked its college students with building satellite-driven predictive models to solve a most persistent winter challenge: ice.
Aerospace Meets Maritime
Michigan maintains an all-domain value proposition, and the integration of the aerospace and maritime sectors is a cornerstone of Michigan’s economic diversification strategy. The Michigan Office of Defense and Aerospace Innovation (ODAI) hosted the 2025 MiSpace Hackathon in the fall of 2025, drawing more than a hundred Michigan-based undergraduate students to use space-based data to predict Great Lakes ice packs.
Satellite and remote sensing data are becoming increasingly accessible, transforming how we tackle terrestrial problems. In 2025 alone, approximately 10,000 satellites were launched globally, each designed to sense our environment
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