After five years, Californian company Planet has accumulated more than 100 satellites in orbit, which allows it to start selling and providing images of our planet.
With 88 new shoebox-sized satellites circulating in orbit, Planet from San Francisco can track every piece of the earth's surface.
The last batch of Dove satellites went aboard the Indian PSLV rocket on Tuesday evening. They increased the number of satellites to 149, and also have seven tomographs with higher resolution.
Planet CEO Will Marshall announced that the sale was announced earlier this month. Why so many satellites? The company's business plan is to take a daily survey of all the land on Earth, which will help campaigns, researchers and the government to better understand the changing planet.
“This massive change will increase 1,000 times the data rate,” said Marshall.
The company, founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, has already signed contracts with more than 100 clients, exceeding its expectations for 2016.
After three months of preparation of satellites (they need to tune in to work), Planet will be able to offer daily photo delivery worldwide. And this service will be in great demand. “Of course, it’s hard to guess in advance how things will be. We made a big bet. But we would not have created such a satellite constellation if we had not counted on a large market, ”said Marshall.
Until now, the company is counting on three areas of customers: agriculture, government and Internet companies who want to update their cards.
“We can increase the yield of each farm pixel by pixel anywhere in the world,” he says. The data will help to better manage (where and what to grow, when to plant, water, fertilize and harvest).
Governments are interested in photo support services: from disaster response to urban planning. Brazil and Mexico acquire data to track deforestation.
The company did not share information on the amount spent on the creation of satellites.
Unlike traditional satellite production, Planet did not worry about their reliability. They tried to surpass in quantity.
“We are creating new devices and launching into space,” Marshall said. “We have enough satellites, so if one failure happens, it will not be the end of the world.”
Planet is preparing another 48 Dove vehicles to launch this summer.
