It was a rather difficult year for the International Space Station. Three cargo space ships participating in three different programs (Russian Progress, SpaceX's Dragon and Orbital Sciences' Cygnus) could not deliver the cargo to their destination on time.
Planet Labs, a space explorer, is one of many who lost things aboard SpaceX and Orbital, whose flights were tracked by 34 mini-satellites. They had to record the movement of objects and send data to Earth in real time.
“We couldn’t understand for a long time what happened. It was a shock for us,” said NASA lead scientist, Robbie Schingler, for Discovery News. The company has done everything possible to change the trajectory of the cargo ship in order to avoid a collision with an asteroid. This has already happened a few months ago. Then at the last moment we managed to slip past him. Later, the cargo had to be transferred on board another spacecraft, the SpaceX, which managed to reach orbit safely. At the moment, another launch is planned for the space station, but already on the Japanese HTV spacecraft.
Planet Labs, a young organization working in the field of space, plans to launch 100 mini-satellites into Earth orbit each year, which can transmit information in real time. To date, their capital is estimated at 183 million dollars. This amount they were able to earn over the past 4 years. Revenues are growing, but so far the launch of the program is not calculated in the near future. The company also plans to expand its working staff. Now 145 scientists work at Planet Labs, and over the last year another 65 were hired. Most are located in the main headquarters in San Francisco, others in Texas and Washington.
At present, there are about 300 satellites of the company on Earth. On average, their service life varies from 6 to 9 months. In the future, it is planned to deploy satellites that can operate from 2 to 5 years. In addition, cameras installed on the devices are being upgraded: they increase the capture area to 5 meters of space by one pixel.
The organization hopes that the updated satellites in the amount of 100 pieces will go into orbit next year. So far, test versions are used by some customers, but in the future, Planet Labs wants to expand their distribution and use all its capabilities to the fullest extent.
"At the moment, the focus for our company is to receive permission to launch spacecraft in the next 12 months. It is also necessary to collect some additional data in order to be able to develop in different directions," said Schingler.
