Author Topic: With 'Mission 1' Complete, Planet Turns Focus to Data Analysis  (Read 341 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Buster's Uncle

  • With community service, I
  • Ascend
  • *
  • Posts: 49574
  • €483
  • View Inventory
  • Send /Gift
  • Because there are times when people just need a cute puppy  Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur  A WONDERFUL concept, Unity - & a 1-way trip that cost 400 trillion & 40 yrs.  
  • AC2 is my instrument, my heart, as I play my song.
  • Planet tales writer Smilie Artist Custom Faction Modder AC2 Wiki contributor Downloads Contributor
    • View Profile
    • My Custom Factions
    • Awards
With 'Mission 1' Complete, Planet Turns Focus to Data Analysis
« on: November 25, 2017, 04:33:34 PM »
With 'Mission 1' Complete, Planet Turns Focus to Data Analysis
Space.com
By Jeff Foust, SpaceNews Writer |  November 25, 2017 06:08am ET



A pair of Dove cubesats being deployed from the International Space Station. With the company's constellation now able to image the Earth's entire landmass once a day, Planet is shifting its attention to developing machine learning tools to analyze images and extract insights from them.  Credit: Planet

 

Updated Nov. 19 to clarify Planet's work with data analysis partners.

LUXEMBOURG CITY — Having achieved its original goal of taking images of the entire planet every day, Planet is now focusing on developing machine learning capabilities to convert that imagery into actionable, and lucrative, insights.

Speaking at the NewSpace Europe conference here Nov. 17, Kam Shahid, director of space operations for Planet, said the company had achieved "Mission 1" for the company, dating back to its founding seven years ago, of taking images of the Earth's entire landmass once per day.

The bulk of that imagery, he says, comes from the more than 140 operational Dove cubesats, developed in-house at Planet. The company also has five RapidEye medium-resolution satellites it acquired in 2015, and 13 SkySat satellites from the acquisition of Terra Bella, formerly Skybox Imaging, from Google. Six of those satellites launched Oct. 31 on a Minotaur-C rocket, along with four Dove cubesats.

That constellation, Shahid said, produces large volumes of data. "This is what imaging the Earth every day really means: 1.4 million images every day at 29 megapixels," he said. Planet downlinks six terabytes of data per day, he said, with a total coverage area of 300 million square kilometers.

With the satellite constellation in place, the challenge for Planet now is to turn the volume of images it produces into data products. "This is what we see for the future for our company, turning data into insights," he said. "We have focused extensively on building a pipeline which can take all of this data, process it and get valuable information out."

That approach, he said, involves the use of machine learning technologies for automated analyses of images. An example he gave was using images to count the number of cars in a lot. The high-resolution images from SkySat images allow the algorithms to count individual cars. In medium-resolution, but more frequent, Dove images, the algorithms can instead measure the area of lots filled by cars, and from that estimate the number of cars.

That can be used for a wide range of applications. "The idea is that you can use our imagery and ask questions and get answers," he said. "This is what the future is and this is where Planet is moving. We are moving into analytics."

Planet is not alone in emphasizing analytics. Several other companies are developing systems to transform the rapidly expanding volume of satellite images into data products. Ursa Space Systems raised $7 million in a Series A round last month to expand its products, which are based on synthetic aperture radar imagery it purchases. Other companies in the sector include Descartes Labs, Orbital Insight and SpaceKnow.

Shahid said later that Planet will develop its machine learning capabilities in-house, a philosophy it has followed for its Dove satellites and other key technologies. Customers, he said, would be able to bring in their own data sets to combine with the analysis of Planet imagery. Planet will continue to partner with other companies for analytics, company spokesman Trevor Hammond said Nov. 18, noting it has "numerous paying customers" in such arrangements currently.

"The goal is to provide users ways to get the information they need to make smarter decisions," Will Marshall, the co-founder and chief executive of Planet, said in a company blog post this month about the Mission 1 milestone. "In short, Planet will index physical change on Earth the same way Google indexed the internet. Imagine the possibilities."


https://www.space.com/38851-planet-cubesat-mission-1-data-analysis.html

 

* User

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Select language:

* Community poll

SMAC v.4 SMAX v.2 (or previous versions)
-=-
24 (7%)
XP Compatibility patch
-=-
9 (2%)
Gog version for Windows
-=-
103 (32%)
Scient (unofficial) patch
-=-
40 (12%)
Kyrub's latest patch
-=-
14 (4%)
Yitzi's latest patch
-=-
89 (28%)
AC for Mac
-=-
3 (0%)
AC for Linux
-=-
6 (1%)
Gog version for Mac
-=-
10 (3%)
No patch
-=-
16 (5%)
Total Members Voted: 314
AC2 Wiki Logo
-click pic for wik-

* Random quote

Kri'lan taught me of the resonance and how to feel it. After much training, I could see ? the very surface under our feet, Planet itself ? is a living, fluctuating nexus of energy, violent, beautiful and quite unstable. And I could also feel its cousins ? distant mirrors on the other side of the space-time continuum ? the far-flung Manifolds.
~Prophet Cha Dawn 'The Betrayer and I'

* Select your theme

*
Templates: 5: index (default), PortaMx/Mainindex (default), PortaMx/Frames (default), Display (default), GenericControls (default).
Sub templates: 8: init, html_above, body_above, portamx_above, main, portamx_below, body_below, html_below.
Language files: 4: index+Modifications.english (default), TopicRating/.english (default), PortaMx/PortaMx.english (default), OharaYTEmbed.english (default).
Style sheets: 0: .
Files included: 45 - 1228KB. (show)
Queries used: 36.

[Show Queries]