Terabytes From Space: Satellite Imaging Fills Data Centers
Satellites from commercial providers like Planet.com are providing detailed analytics of global economic activity, while generating massive datasets. (Image: Planet.com)
Commercial imaging companies are collecting upwards of 100 terabytes (TB) or more per day, every day, 365 days a year, accumulating huge data sets measured in petabytes per company.
While Hollywood has glorified the role of imaging satellites as all-seeing eyes tracking everything on the surface of the planet, only now is reality catching up to the movies. The real value in imagery is as much the ability to track changes over time as being able to take instant pictures of the world’s hotspots. A growing number of companies are pursuing this opportunity.
“More than 40 commercial companies have launched imaging satellites in the past 10 years,” said Janice Starzyk, Vice President of Commercial Space for analytics and engineering firm Bryce Space and Technology. “We count 36 commercial earth observation companies as start-up space companies. Twenty-one of these were founded between 2014 and 2019.”
Bryce’s internal forecasts count for more than 50 proposed commercial earth observation constellations being developed, with Starzyk projecting that between 500 to 1,000 remote sensing satellites will be launched over the next five years, with the lower end more likely given the current market.
If simply adding tens of terabytes of storage business per day is not enough to whet the appetite of any data center operator, raw images must be massaged and processed into usable form, cataloged, and made searchable and deliverable to users for analysis. Machine learning is increasingly being applied to locate features and find changes over time, providing alerts to end-users when things are discovered. To top it all off, imaging data is increasingly being “fused” with other information such as satellite IoT to provide a holistic picture of happenings on the ground, sea, and sky.
But developing value-added, user friendly services is a challenge. “Most of the space remote sensing companies sell themselves as data analytics companies, because satellite imagery itself is becoming a commodity,” said Brian Weeden, Director of Policy Planning at the Secure World Foundation. “The real value lies in turning that imagery or other raw data into actionable information. Turns out that’s a lot harder to do than to say, but it’s where the biggest commercial focus is.”
San Francisco-based Planet started the wave of new commercial imaging firms in 2010, launching its first satellites in 2013. Today, Planet has two distinct fleets of optical imaging satellites. Small 3U (30x10x10 centimeter cubesat standard, not data center rack standard) Doves collecting 3- to 5-meter resolution imagery make up the majority of its fleet with over 130 in orbit, taking 1.3 million 29-megapixel images every day. Fifteen larger dorm-fridge-size SkySats provide high-resolution imagery of under 1 meter, providing enough detail to distinguish between trucks and cars.
“We collect 10 TB per day,” said Planet co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Robbie Schingler. “Once we complete our upgrade to SuperDoves, we’ll collect 40 TB per day.” The SuperDove satellites use upgraded cameras to capture more bands of color, giving them improved capabilities for monitoring crops and forests, locating minerals, studying the atmosphere, and other applications.
While a single image of a single point on the planet provides value, it is the accumulation of imagery where the true treasure resides. Companies can look through an imaging catalog in a “time machine” fashion to observe economic activity such as oil tanks filling up, ships moving in and out of ports, volume of cars at shopping malls, when crops are planted and harvested just to name a few examples.
Planet has an average of 1,200 images for every point on the Earth’s landmass since its satellites started operations.
