Earth Sciences from Space

http://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Micro-satellites

Geoscience -- #Geo360: Eyes in the Sky, Monitoring the Earth by Satellite

June 2014 (updated)

Earth Imaging -- Micro-satellites [1]

Nextgen #earthscience in era of #climatechange and #globalsecurity threat

“Five years from now, there might be 200 or more up there..." [2]

Geoscience Satellites -- Start-up companies

BlackBridge [3], Dauria [4], DigitalGlobe [5] [6] [7] GeoEye [8],

GeoOptics [9], NovaWurks [10], OmniEarth [11]

OrbitLogic [12], PlanetiQ [13], Planet Lab [14] [15]

RapidEye [16], Skybox [17] [18] [19]

Teledyne [20], Tyvak Nano-Sat [21], Urthecast [22]

June 2014 Google Buys Skybox [23] [24] [25] [26]

[Background] June 18, 2013 Inside a Startup’s Plan to Turn a Swarm of DIY Satellites Into an All-Seeing Eye [27]

June 16, 2014 - Wall Street Journal / by Christopher Mims [28]

Amid the Crazy Valuations, Google Finds a Steal

By 2016 or so, Skybox will be able to take full images of the Earth twice a day, at a resolution that until last week was illegal to sell commercially — all with just a half-dozen satellites.

By the time its entire fleet of 24 satellites has launched in 2018, Skybox will be imaging the entire Earth at a resolution sufficient to capture, for example, real-time video of cars driving down the highway. And it will be doing it three times a day.

You might think, thanks to weather maps and the satellite view on Google Maps, that such imagery already is readily available. But because satellites were, until recently, so expensive to build and launch, that isn't the case. There are only nine satellites in orbit now that capture high resolution images for the commercial market, and their capabilities are regularly commandeered for national-security purposes by the U.S. government. That means most of the pictures of the Earth that you've seen are of poor quality and years out of date.

And yet, as I discovered when I visited Skybox recently at its modest, low-slung headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., satellite imagery isn't even the business in which the company's founders see themselves. As at Google, the business of Skybox isn't data, but knowledge.

"We think we are going to fundamentally change humanity's understanding of the economic landscape on a daily basis," says co-founder Dan Berkenstock...

Skybox's images will inevitably lead to apps and services no one can envision — with unknowable disruptive potential. Skybox executives tell me they hope to offer their data to outside developers... In the short term, Google has said it would use Skybox's images to improve the search company's maps.

A patent revealed in May indicates that Google builds its superaccurate maps directly from satellite imagery, and the company has long had a deal with Skybox competitor DigitalGlobe, whose satellites cost 10 times as much as Skybox's and are 10 times heavier, leading to much higher launch costs. DigitalGlobe's stock dipped 4% on news of the Skybox deal...

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“With all these start-ups, the things you’ll be able to do with satellite images will grow exponentially..." - IEEE, May 2014

June 16, 2014

U.S. Department of Commerce lifts ban on satellite images showing features smaller than 20 inches - DigitalGlobe [29] [30] [31] [32]
"Companies had not been allowed to make use of images where features smaller than 50cm were visible"
Satellites Are Cleared to Take Photos at Mailbox-Level Detail per DigitalGlobe petition
Worldview-3 satellite is set to launch in August. Digital Globe [33] [34] says it will now be able to sell images that show features as small as 31cm [35]
Sites like Google and Bing Maps will be able to use higher-quality satellite images in near real-time [36] [37]... eventually real-time

GP360: Earth-monitoring, data-sharing, open source, is in the wings...

Citizen-networking/schools-education space-earth projects, first-ever...

24/7 high-definition video of Earth <Urthecast-ISS> [38]

Live from the International Space Station [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

Feb 2014 – Planet Labs

Since the launch of the original Landsat program in 1972, generating images of Earth from space has been the near-exclusive domain of enormous, multi-million dollar satellites sponsored by nations and major defense corporations.

New micro-satellites, including those launched from the ISS, aim to make real-time imaging available for a fraction of the past decades price and move us from military-defense-communication operations to earth systems-defense, monitoring, sustainability and eco-nomics functions.

Earth systems, monitoring over time - http://www.earthzine.org/geo-and-geoss-the-group-on-earth-observations-and-the-global-earth-observations-system-of-systems/

<more> http://gizmodo.com/meet-the-flockers-iss-launches-low-cost-earth-imaging-1517232660

Earth Imaging - background – 2007 - Acquiring large data sets of Earth imagery in a simple, low-cost way, represents a new market opportunity that has yet to be addressed. New telescope design enables low-cost satellite with that purpose.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4161433&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D4161433

Jan 2014 - "Flocking" "Doves" "Nanosatellites" - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flock-of-nano-satellites-to-capture-high-res-views-of-whole-earth/

Google goes mapping - http://gizmodo.com/how-swarms-of-tiny-satellites-are-creating-a-real-time-1497890594

Swarms of small satellites set to deliver close to real-time imagery - http://www.nature.com/news/many-eyes-on-earth-1.14475

Dec 2013

"How Planet Labs Is Saving the Earth with 'Homemade' Satellites. It took less than six months to build twenty-eight of them"...

<more> http://www.businessinsider.com/planet-labs-fleet-of-homemade-satellites-2013-12?op=1

http://www.space.com/23739-tiny-earth-satellite-fleet-launching-december.html

Nov 2013

Flock of Mini- and Micro-sats delivered to space with international Dnepr co-venture - http://www.space.com/23738-dnepr-rocket-launches-32-satellites.html

Minotaur 1 delivers 29 mini's/CubeSats including first-ever design/build satellite project of a US high school

http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/MissionUpdates/MinotaurI_ORS-3/

CubeSats

Sept 2013

Sensors and Systems - “Every year the technology improves, with better computers and storage and payloads. The technological evolution improves, price points continue to come down, and now with a small 150 to 300 kg spacecraft for $10 to $20 million you can do what you were doing with a 1,000 kg spacecraft five to 10 years ago for $500 million.” Surrey Satellite Technology-RapidEye satellite imagery “Changing the Economics of Space” ... co-ventures/joint ventures/'ride-alongs'/shared platforms/accessible data

<more> http://www.sstl.co.uk/ - note connection to SpaceX - Elon Musk - note Elon Muck opening up the Tesla platform on June 12, 2014 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrey_Satellite_Technology - http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

June 2013

Citizens in Space - http://www.citizensinspace.org/2013/06/planet-labs-to-launch-flock-1/

Opening up to understanding and interacting with our eco-operating systems

eOS http://www.scribd.com/doc/189078245/eOS-EcoOperatingSystem-1

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Earth systems, monitoring over time - http://www.earthzine.org/geo-and-geoss-the-group-on-earth-observations-and-the-global-earth-observations-system-of-systems/

GEO - Group on Earth Observations - http://www.earthobservations.org/about_geo.shtml

GEOSS - Global Earth Observation System of Systems - http://www.earthobservations.org/geoss.shtml

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