Stories about the Earth Observation industry’s eyes on our planet.
Planet (NYSE:PL) yesterday announced Planetary Variables, a new analytics product that spans three preprocessed data feeds: Soil Water Content: daily observations of the amount of water in soil at 5cm depth at 100m resolution Land surface Temperature: “Accurate, continuous insight” into surface temps at 100m resolution Vegetation Biomass Proxy: Daily crop biomass data at 10m […]
German thermal remote sensing startup ConstellR has acquired Belgian hyperspectral startup ScanWorld to offer better agricultural insights for end users. According to ConstellR, ScanWorld’s hyperspectral product development know-how will complement its own thermal infrared and data processing capabilities. Both companies were founded in 2020 with the aim of offering Earth observation (EO) data to the […]
ESA has contracted Arianespace to launch the EU’s Sentinel-1C Earth observation satellite aboard an Avio-built Vega-C rocket. Sentinel-1C is expected to take over the duties from Sentinel-1B, which suffered an anomaly in December. In January, ESA officials said that recovery efforts had failed. By late February, they identified a 28V power-regulated bus as the root […]
BlackSky (NYSE:BKSY) is a geospatial intelligence and continuous monitoring company. The Herndon, VA-based space company has been in the news at fairly regular intervals in recent months, due to its role in supplying open-source imagery and intelligence related to Ukraine. Payload sat down with BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole at Space Symposium earlier this week to […]
On Thursday, Planet released Q4 and full-year (for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2022) financial results. Planet booked $131.2M in revenue last year, the company said yesterday in Q4 & FY 21 financial results. The planet-scanning company is growing at a healthy clip: 2021’s results represent a 16% jump over 2020. Q4 was Planet’s […]
Imagery shows destruction of a neighborhood in Moschun, Ukraine. Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies. Satellite imagery is continuing to prove a trustworthy source and rare window into the tolls of war. New Maxar imagery shows massive destruction by Russian attacks across Ukraine, as well as the movement of Russian military forces. The damage: Ukraine’s cities […]
AI startup Synthetaic has closed a $13M Series A, the Delafield, WI-based company announced this morning. Lupa Systems led the round, with TitleTown Tech, Betaworks, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Esri also participating. Synthetaic has raised $17.5M to date. AI’s “data problem” Labeled data is a must for most state-of-the-art models. In a world where scale […]
Image: MDA MDA, a Canadian satellite developer and geospatial analytics provider, announced Tuesday that it is supplying satellite imagery to Ukraine. The move follows a similar announcement the same day from Satellogic and Astraea. In a statement, MDA said it “secured special authorization” from the Canadian government “to collect synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery over […]
Satellogic has partnered with Astraea, a geospatial and AI analytics company, to quickly supply the Ukrainian government and allied groups with satellite imagery and change detection in the midst of the ongoing war in the country. The two companies said yesterday they’ve created a portal called Ukraine Observer where governments and humanitarian organizations can apply to […]
Earlier this week, Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov told reporters that it was critical for Ukraine’s military to gain real-time access to Western satellite operators’ imagery (h/t Ars Technica). “Right now, we need to have this intelligence,” Polyakov said Monday, as quoted by Ars. “Every night, we’ve been bombarded, and at night we are blind.” Polyakov said […]
Last Wednesday, in the lead-up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we wrote about how commercial satellite imagery laid bare the open secret of Moscow’s military mobilization. Satellite imagery has contributed to a growing corpus of open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis, a vital asset helping to pierce through the fog of war. Newsrooms, analysts, and amateur […]
Intelligence agencies have their own tactics and techniques to follow the latest military developments near Ukraine. But spies aren’t inclined to share all that classified information with the rest of us. Satellite imagery, along with other sources like social media posts and video geolocation/metadata, enable open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis from publicly available data. Coupled with […]
