With 88 new shoebox-sized satellites now circling Earth, San Francisco-based Planet will be able to image every piece of land on Earth every day.
The latest flock of Planet's Dove satellites blasted off aboard an Indian PSLV rocket Tuesday night. The 88 newcomers expand Planet's constellation to 149 satellites in orbit, not including seven higher-resolution imagers it will acquire as part of its purchase of Terra Bella from Google's parent company, Alphabet.
Why so many satellites? Planet's business plan is to acquire daily imaging of the entire Earth land mass so companies, governments and researchers can better understand the changing planet, Marshall told Seeker.
"It's a massive change — a 1,000-fold increase in data rates," he said.
"It's hard to know exactly. It's a big bet in a way, but we have seen a lot of interest in this data set. We wouldn't have built the constellation if we didn't think there was a huge market," Marshall said.
"We can tell crop yield on a pixel-by-pixel basis for every farm around the world," Marshall said. The data is being used to precisely manage where and what to grow and when to plant, water, fertilize and harvest crops.
"We put the latest technology on and throw it into space," Marshall said. "We launch more than we need and if one or two fail it isn't the end of the world."
Originally published on Seeker.
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