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Competitor BlackSky[0] says their objective is "90km^2 in 90 minutes for $90", and they'll be able to do it at 1m resolution instead of Planet's 3-5m resolution

Competitor BlackSky[0] says their objective is "90km^2 in 90 minutes for $90", and they'll be able to do it at 1m resolution instead of Planet's 3-5m resolution. Not only that, but BlackSky's platform lets you order imagery (both tasking and archive) from many different vendors[1]. So you could set up a recurring job to capture, say, a major port, and the resolution will be good enough to count individual cargo containers (and not just large boats). Then, you could order archived imagery to compare it with. [0] https://www.blacksky.com/ https://www.blacksky.com/ [1] https://www.blacksky.com/2016/12/14/spaceflight-industries-unveils-its-blacksky-platform-for-observing-the-planet/ https://www.blacksky.com/2016/12/14/spaceflight-industries-u...

Roritharr 10y ago
I wonder how many people trade on this information already.
- patrickk 10y ago
  If you Google "hedge fund satellite data", you'll get loads of results, e.g: > Every five minutes a satellite captures images of China’s biggest cities from space. Thousands of miles away in California, a computer looks at the shadows of the buildings in the images and draws a conclusion: China’s real estate boom is slowing. > Traders at BlackRock, the money management giant, then use the data to help choose whether to buy or sell the stocks of Chinese developers. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/business/dealbook/the-next-generation-of-hedge-fund-stars-data-crunching-computers.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/business/dealbook/the-nex...
  - zeristor 10y ago
    With this in mind have people been gaming the system? A building on its own is a liability, its only worth something if it has occupants (or property prices are rising)
  - piercebot 10y ago
    China is hard, though, because it's cloudy very often. Having a fleet of satellites in orbit with a ~15 minute revisit rate will be game changing to making sure you find exactly what you're looking for on the day you're looking for it.
- matheweis 10y ago
  They already do - several years back I was at a supercomputing conference and one of the presenters was processing satellite data, counting cars in parking lots so traders could estimate revenue of certain large retailers. That was 6+ years ago... Imagine combining that with modern ML (not so much for the car counting but the revenue estimates based on that)
- piercebot 10y ago
  Not just for traders, but this is really important for combating fraud, waste, and abuse. The World Bank, for example, makes lots of overseas investments in places where it might not be convenient to send representatives to check up on the progress of, say, a factory for which they have funded the construction. They'll receive monthly reports about the factory and how many people it's employing, and when they finally go check up on it, it's just a guard house and a pile of rubble. Having a fleet of satellites that you can use to monitor your investments will definitely make it much harder to get away with stealing money through this type of fraud.
  - sah2ed 10y ago
    > The World Bank, for example, makes lots of overseas investments in places ... Perhaps you meant the International Finance Corporation (IFC)? The World Bank's mandate is primarily to give out loans to developing nations. The IFC is the arm of the World Bank Group that makes investments.
Tepix 10y ago
Using the SpyMeSat iOS app ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spymesat/id691290387?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spymesat/id691290387?mt=8 ) you can also get 1km² or 2km² for 10€/20€ already. They offer access to a lot of different sats, some have a resolution as high as 50cm.
jofer 10y ago
That's a tasking model. The satellites can't capture everything, so they get a list of specific regions to observe. In other words, you need to know ahead of time what area you want to observe and you'll tell a satellite to point itself towards that area. Planet's dove constellation is a monitoring model. It's medium resolution (~4m - i.e. you can see a house clearly, but can't reliably see cars), but captures Earth's landmass on a daily basis (modulo cloud cover). In a nutshell, they're different use cases. A tasking model doesn't help you if you need to know what changed in an arbitrary area a week ago. A monitoring model is less useful for something like a port, where you know you'll want to always image it.
- piercebot 10y ago
  BlackSky will also allow you to task ad-hoc; the plan is to have 60 sats in orbit by 2020 with a ~15 minute revisit to any place on earth. http://spacenews.com/blacksky-global-says-its-poised-to-cover-globe-with-60-smallsats/ http://spacenews.com/blacksky-global-says-its-poised-to-cove...
deleted 10y ago
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Roritharr 10y ago

I wonder how many people trade on this information already.

patrickk 10y ago
If you Google "hedge fund satellite data", you'll get loads of results, e.g: > Every five minutes a satellite captures images of China’s biggest cities from space. Thousands of miles away in California, a computer looks at the shadows of the buildings in the images and draws a conclusion: China’s real estate boom is slowing. > Traders at BlackRock, the money management giant, then use the data to help choose whether to buy or sell the stocks of Chinese developers. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/business/dealbook/the-next-generation-of-hedge-fund-stars-data-crunching-computers.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/business/dealbook/the-nex...
- zeristor 10y ago
  With this in mind have people been gaming the system? A building on its own is a liability, its only worth something if it has occupants (or property prices are rising)
- piercebot 10y ago
  China is hard, though, because it's cloudy very often. Having a fleet of satellites in orbit with a ~15 minute revisit rate will be game changing to making sure you find exactly what you're looking for on the day you're looking for it.
matheweis 10y ago
They already do - several years back I was at a supercomputing conference and one of the presenters was processing satellite data, counting cars in parking lots so traders could estimate revenue of certain large retailers. That was 6+ years ago... Imagine combining that with modern ML (not so much for the car counting but the revenue estimates based on that)
piercebot 10y ago
Not just for traders, but this is really important for combating fraud, waste, and abuse. The World Bank, for example, makes lots of overseas investments in places where it might not be convenient to send representatives to check up on the progress of, say, a factory for which they have funded the construction. They'll receive monthly reports about the factory and how many people it's employing, and when they finally go check up on it, it's just a guard house and a pile of rubble. Having a fleet of satellites that you can use to monitor your investments will definitely make it much harder to get away with stealing money through this type of fraud.
- sah2ed 10y ago
  > The World Bank, for example, makes lots of overseas investments in places ... Perhaps you meant the International Finance Corporation (IFC)? The World Bank's mandate is primarily to give out loans to developing nations. The IFC is the arm of the World Bank Group that makes investments.

Tepix 10y ago

Using the SpyMeSat iOS app ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spymesat/id691290387?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spymesat/id691290387?mt=8 ) you can also get 1km² or 2km² for 10€/20€ already. They offer access to a lot of different sats, some have a resolution as high as 50cm.

jofer 10y ago

That's a tasking model. The satellites can't capture everything, so they get a list of specific regions to observe. In other words, you need to know ahead of time what area you want to observe and you'll tell a satellite to point itself towards that area. Planet's dove constellation is a monitoring model. It's medium resolution (~4m - i.e. you can see a house clearly, but can't reliably see cars), but captures Earth's landmass on a daily basis (modulo cloud cover). In a nutshell, they're different use cases. A tasking model doesn't help you if you need to know what changed in an arbitrary area a week ago. A monitoring model is less useful for something like a port, where you know you'll want to always image it.

piercebot 10y ago
BlackSky will also allow you to task ad-hoc; the plan is to have 60 sats in orbit by 2020 with a ~15 minute revisit to any place on earth. http://spacenews.com/blacksky-global-says-its-poised-to-cover-globe-with-60-smallsats/ http://spacenews.com/blacksky-global-says-its-poised-to-cove...

deleted 10y ago

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