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Tiny satellites ushering in a new space revolution
- PaulMest 9y agoI took a tour of their SF office last year. It's a pretty impressive operation. The satellites are indeed quite small; I always compare them to a loaf of bread with some wings. The people that work there are pretty sharp and seem to be very excited about what they do. I was one of the first people to consume their v0 and v1 APIs to get their analytic imagery dataset. It was more challenging than it should have been to transfer ~100TB into our compute cluster. I haven't touched their API in about 7 or 8 months, but from my last meeting with them they said they have eliminated my top pain point. Looking forward to seeing more great things from them.
- terravion 9y agoThere's a lot more to do in remote sensing, but I think your comment that there's an API for looking at the world is perhaps the more accurate way to describe the power of this moment in technology history. It is a great feat Planet has accomplished.
- rmason 9y agoAgree a lot more is possible with remote sensing. I worked with it in ag in 80's and 90's, the biggest problems were: 1. Price was to high for the value we could offer 2. 40% chance we wouldn't get a usable image of the field due to cloud cover 3. Its one data point, you can see a problem but can't always figure out what's wrong. I'm really hopeful for drones that can operate below the cloud cover and AI that can take bare soil images, tile maps, soil tests and provide a more intelligent answer for fixing the problems. What the farmer wants is a prescription with a shot at a decent ROI.
- kumarvvr 9y agoThat is a pretty cool engineering feet. Never knew a shoe box sized telescope can give such detailed pictures. They have sent about 200 satellites, cost "six figures" each, so an estimate of 200,000 a piece, they have spent about 40 million dollars, excluding the price of launches. The data collected is definitely worth the price IMO. Imagine the ability to monitor storms and hurricanes, analyze their data and update our climate models. They have about 80 million in funding alone, which is incredible. I wonder what else is possible with so many eyes in the sky.
- westmeal 9y agoGlobal surveillance networks.
- Ashtyn77 9y agojust as Bryan said I'm shocked that a student able to profit $7511 in 4 weeks on the computer . check this site out>.... http://bit.ly/2coUNgf http://bit.ly/2coUNgf
- 659087 9y ago"Google/Facebook: Please step outside and look up for 10 seconds to verify your identity"
- ant6n 9y agoThis does seem reminiscent of some Bond movie: some young company/genius supposedly wants to save the world via a fleet of satellites tracking all sorts of environmental issues, a company called Planet (a logo written in greenery in their office). Then it turns out there's actually a nefarious reason for all this, like total surveillance of everybody etc.
- Shivetya 9y agoAnother way to track animal and eventually bird migrations when resolution is high enough. Better coverage of large scale disasters, think earthquake and your mentioned hurricanes, but also fires in remote areas and possibly detection of avalanches. Perhaps even revealing ancient civilizations that haven't been identified yet? There is a lot of area on this planet not of interest and not extensively photographed to where its generally available.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agofeet?
- shawn-butler 9y agoI'm not sure if this includes the Skylabs-TerraBella launches? Skylabs had seven high-res SkySat satellites that Planet got via acquiring Skylabs/TerraBella complementing its existing fleet of medium res satellites. Planet’s existing network could only get three to five meter resolution, while Skybox’s satellites could manage “sub-meter" accuracy. 80 million in funding seems low. The price of the Skybox/TerraBella acquisition from Google alone had to be in the hundreds of millions.
- jessriedel 9y agoThis article is in desperate need of a r/spacex-style bullet point summary.
- sjcsjc 9y agoYes, a tl;dr would be very much appreciated if anyone were to have the time and inclination.
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- patall 9y agoThat sounds very scary to me. If they don't care whether a single satellite is working or not, they are basically asking Kessler syndrom to start within years. Multiple start-ups (etc.) and the article covers not even have a tiny bit about what happens at the end of life of the satellites, what could go wrong ...
- InclinedPlane 9y agoThis is simply ignorant of the plans. Firstly, there are levels of functionality, being able to provide service being the highest one. Out of service satellites are still most likely to be able to execute a controlled re-entry. Secondly, these satellites will be in low Earth orbit. If they become completely inoperable they have an orbital lifetime of only a few years before they re-enter. Only with routine station keeping maneuvers can they stay in orbit for even their sub-decade planned lifetimes. So there's very little risk of a Kessler syndrome type situation developing. At any given time the number of derelict satellites in orbit would be quite small if not zero.
- kobeya 9y ago> Out of service satellites are still most likely to be able to execute a controlled re-entry How? By a burn? That's a lot of fuel reserve to use up.
- InclinedPlane 9y agoHow much reserve fuel does an out of service satellite need to use after it burns up in Earth's atmosphere? How much fuel do you imagine it takes a satellite to re-enter if it will happen automatically in a matter of a few years? The answer to both is, of course, not much, not much at all.
- Retric 9y agoIt takes minimal energy to deorbit from LEO. By changing the shape of the orbit you spend some time in denser atmosphere which increases drag which quickly deorbits you. Controlled just means they start the processes at a specific time.
- nwrk 9y agohttps://spaceknow.com/ https://spaceknow.com/
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- hi41 9y agoKindly can someone tell me how these snall satellites are able to remain in orbit. Don't we need jet propulsion to have them stay in orbit and not fall into earth? I don't much about satellites.
- Ajedi32 9y agoNot really. Once something is in orbit, it's just going to naturally stay in orbit unless acted on by an outside force. That's just basic inertia. There is some amount of atmospheric drag in low earth orbit which will eventually cause satellites at that altitude to lose speed and fall back to earth, but that drag is small enough that the satellites should be able to remain in orbit for years without needing any additional thrust.
- teddyh 9y agoThe moon doesn’t need any propulsion to stay in orbit around the Earth. A satellite is just a very small and very close moon. The fact that it’s closer than the moon just means that it will orbit faster than the moon does.
- Kroniker 9y agoThe way it works is that the satellite has very high velocity tangent to the earth- so they are constantly falling to earth, but they are moving tangent at the same rate that they are falling- because the earth is a sphere, the ground "falls away" from underneath them. They're constantly "missing" the Earth.
- aphextron 9y agoWhat's the best way for someone to get involved in space hardware?
- 0xdead_beef 9y agoEngineering degree; willingness to work in Defense (to cut your teeth)
- currydove 9y agoMaterials Science. Tinkering with off the shelf hardware (even start with RaspberryPis). Systems Integration (legit systems integration, not the shitty title Accenture/Deloitte/Generic Consulting Company gives you for working at an Enterprise client). FPGAs. Electrical Engineering. Thermal Engineering is huge. or the usual: Software Engineering. (because satellites need software too) Any of the above to name a few
- digikata 9y agoThis is a good Embedded.fm podcast episode interviewing one of the professors that was key in starting the trend of small satellites. http://embedded.fm/episodes/195 http://embedded.fm/episodes/195