Skip to content

by Mark Bergen and Ashlee Vance at Bloomberg


  • Planet Labs may buy Skybox and gain new employees from deal
  • Alphabet curbs plans for global internet satellite network

Alphabet Inc. is in talks to sell the Skybox Imaging satellite business it acquired for $500 million less than three years ago, another sign the technology giant is ratcheting back grand ambitions to blanket the globe with internet service.

Planet, a satellite imaging startup former known as Planet Labs, may acquire Skybox, according to people familiar with the situation. Some employees from the Alphabet division, renamed Terra Bella last year, would move to Planet as part of the deal, while others may get different positions at Google, according to these people. They asked not to be identified because the transaction is private.

Representatives from Planet and Alphabet’s Google unit declined to comment.

The move signals an ambitious agenda for Planet, which has raised more than $150 million. In contrast, Google parent Alphabet has been curbing once-audacious plans to blanket the globe with internet access, partly through networks of small satellites. In October, the company cut about 9 percent of staff from its Fiber fast internet service.

In June 2014, when Google acquired Skybox, the search giant said its equipment would help keep Google Maps accurate with up-to-date imagery. It also hoped to use the technology to improve internet access and disaster relief. The division operated within Google’s mapping business and it launched a small number of satellites, each about the size of a refrigerator.

Alphabet seems to be switching from a strategy of developing its own satellite businesses to investing in other companies pursuing similar goals. The Skybox sale to Planet is an equity transaction, which means Alphabet will own a stake in the latter startup, according to some of the people familiar with the situation.

In 2013, Google hired satellite industry pioneer Greg Wyler to work on a $1 billion-plus project for the internet giant, but Wyler left in September 2014 to start his own company, OneWeb. Soon after, Google bought a stake in Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which launches a lot of satellites.

Fierce Rivals

Skybox and Planet were fierce rivals in the emerging market for small, yet capable satellites. Both hoped to surround the Earth with dozens — possibly hundreds — of satellites that can take near-constant pictures of the planet’s surface. The technology has been billed as helpful for things like tracking deforestation and counting the number of cars in retail store parking lots to gauge sales.

The companies differed in their approach. Skybox aimed to make larger satellites with higher image resolution, while Planet has looked to use more, smaller satellites. Skybox’s momentum seemed to slow following Google’s acquisition, while Planet Labs has continued to raise money and send many satellites into space.

Both companies compete against the heavyweights of the satellite imaging business: DigitalGlobe Inc. and Airbus Defence & Space, a unit of Airbus Group SE.

Source

We are pleased to announce that the 11th GEO European Projects Workshop will take place from 19th to 21st June 2017 in Helsinki.

The 11th GEO European Projects Workshop will take place from 19 to 21 June 2017 in Helsinki, co-organised by the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the European Commission. The GEO European Projects’ Workshop is the annual European GEO event which brings together European players from academia, research, public and private sectors interested in and actively contributing to the GEOSS. The aim is to look for synergies among the participants and to discuss how Europe can contribute to this international effort.

More information here

Organised by the National Observatory of Athens, GEO-CRADLE Project Coordinator and kindly hosted by the State Hydrometeorological Service of the Republic of Moldova.

Presentations: GEO-CRADLE contribution towards inventorying of capacities and user needs, gap analysis, maturity indicators and priorities, addressing regional challenges (in the fields of adaptation to climate change, improved food security and water extremes management, better access to raw materials and energy) and implementing GEOSS & Copernicus, by Ms Alexia Tsouni, GEO-CRADLE Project Coordination Team

Presentation of the GEO-CRADLE survey of the regional Earth Observation (EO) capacities, by Ms Alexia Tsouni, GEO-CRADLE Project Coordination Team

Read the AGENDA

Source

(CAMBRIDGE, ON, Nov 2, 2016) – exactEarth Ltd. (TSX: XCT), the leading provider of Satellite AIS data services, announces that it has been awarded a four-year $2.7 million (including taxes) contract by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) to provide AIS data processing services for the Canadian Department of National Defence’s (DND) Polar Epsilon 2 (PE2) project. The PE2 project is a national initiative that will combine radar and AIS data from the RADARSAT Constellation Mission to provide enhanced maritime domain awareness that will identify, detect and track vessels in Canada’s maritime approaches and support Canadian Armed Forces at home and abroad.

Under terms of the contract, exactEarth will provide services to establish, test and validate the AIS processing service in accordance with the PE2 project requirements, which will then be followed by two years of service operations.

“We are pleased to have been selected by MDA for the PE2 project. This contract win is the result of a competitive bidding process where our industry-leading satellite AIS data processing detection technology has once again been recognized for its performance,” said Peter Mabson, CEO of exactEarth. This is a separate agreement from our existing contract with the Government of Canada, and we look forward to expanding the services that we provide to them.”

The PE2 project is part of the Canadian Government’s effort to maintain and expand the country’s access to a domestic source of space-based Earth observation data. According to the Department of National Defence, the Polar Epsilon 2 will use imagery from the three-satellite RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) to deliver advanced surveillance capabilities for domestic and global Canadian Armed Forces operations. The RCM satellites are scheduled for launch in 2018.

For more information on the Polar Epsilon 2 Project, see

About exactEarth Ltd.
exactEarth is a leading provider of global maritime vessel data for ship tracking and maritime situational awareness solutions. Since its establishment in 2009, exactEarth has pioneered a powerful new method of maritime surveillance called Satellite-AIS (“S-AIS”) and has delivered to its clients a view of maritime behaviours across all regions of the world’s oceans unrestricted by terrestrial limitations. exactEarth has deployed an operational data processing supply chain involving a constellation of satellites, receiving ground stations, patented decoding algorithms and advanced “big data” processing and distribution facilities. This ground-breaking system provides a comprehensive picture of the location of AIS equipped maritime vessels throughout the world and allows exactEarth to deliver data and information services characterized by high performance, reliability, security and simplicity to large international markets. For more information, visit exactearth.com.

Source

A new tool provides easy access to information about water in lakes, rivers and coastal areas around the world based on millions of satellite images

The Global Surface Water Explorer, developed by the European Union and Google, is a new online interactive mapping tool that lets you zoom in on any area around the world. The tool shows the local changes in surface water over the past 32 years.

According to the Commission, the data sets reveal that many of the changes are linked to human activities such as the construction of dams, river diversion and unregulated water use. Other changes are attributed to climate change, including droughts and accelerated snow and glacier melt caused by higher temperatures and increased rainfall.

“This new tool is a goldmine. Large amounts of data is generated every second by satellites. However, turning data into knowledge has long been a challenge,” said EU education commissioner Tibor Navracsics, responsible for the European Union’s Joint Research Centre which developed the tool in collaboration with Google.

While the maps show an increase in surface water across Europe, parts of Asia have recorded important decreases according to the Commission. Over 70 per cent of the net loss is concentrated in just five countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Globally, almost 90.000 square kilometres of land – an area the size of Portugal – have vanished altogether, and over 72.000 square kilometres have gone from being present all year round to being around for only a few months of the year, the Commission says.

The tool is based on satellite scenes collected by the United States between 1984 and 2015. To produce the new maps with surface water data based on the satellite images, almost 2000 terabytes of data had to be crunched by 10.000 computers running in parallel the European Commission says.

Satellite Data

Should NASA’s earth observation activities be scaled back significantly, as promised by incoming US president Donald Trump, Europe may have to step up and increase its efforts in that field to maintain a steady supply of climate data. The European Union’s Copernicus programme – which consists of a complex set of systems that collect data from multiple sources – is already working on this.

Maps accessible through the new surface water tool are a contribution to the Copernicus Global Land Service, which provides free and open access to the entire dataset.

The programme is expanding its network of Earth observation satellites, and also maintains detectors at ground stations as well as airborne sensors and sensors at sea.

Copernicus satellites Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 are set to offer additional radar and optical satellite imagery that will help to further improve the detail and accuracy of the information in the Global Surface Water Explorer in the future.

Earlier this year, it was announced that the programme is teaming up with Climate-KIC, the EU’s climate innovation initiative, to accelerate the use of its data in creating climate change solutions.

Source

Facebook Connectivity Lab is leveraging DigitalGlobe’s Geospatial Big Data (GBDX) initiative

At the Mobile World Congress today, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced the Telecom Infra Project, an initiative to develop new technologies and approaches for connecting the 4.2 billion people that still remain offline. To enable this, the Facebook Connectivity Lab is leveraging DigitalGlobe’s Geospatial Big Data initiative to determine population densities across vast rural areas in 20 developing nations. If you are going to connect the world, you need to first know where in the world humans live!

Check out Facebook’s white paper, “Connecting the World with Better Maps: Data-Assisted Population Distribution Mapping.”

Existing maps of populations in many parts of the world are too coarse, outdated, and inaccurate. To solve this problem, information from high-resolution satellites proves invaluable; it provides a consistent global information dataset for mapping population locations. This map, in turn, can inform service providers where connectivity infrastructure should be deployed, whether it be fiber networks or wi-fi hotspots, or communication networks with high-altitude balloons or UAVs. The most efficient network technology depends on the ensuring communications networks designed on proximity to population.

This where DigitalGlobe’s content and platform become a critical part in achieving the vision. DigitalGlobe will be completing an accurate mosaic of the globe at 50 cm resolution in the coming months and will be replenishing this basemap of the world on a frequent basis. Further, DigitalGlobe’s Geospatial Big Data platform, GBDX, makes this rich content along with our 15-year digital library of over 90 petabytes of high resolution DigitalGlobe satellite image data available to anyone, for processing in the cloud. Available for use alongside the data are some of our best computer vision algorithms we designed to convert pixels into meaningful data. On the GBDX platform we provide a much richer library by supporting an ecosystem platform which allows experts to bring their own algorithms to the data and share them with others if they so choose.

For Facebook, we combined DigitalGlobe’s GBDX platform with algorithms for mosaicking and atmospheric compensation to provide consistent mosaics of countries that are foundational to extraction population density mapping. Facebook’s convolutional neural nets are using this accurate content to identify populations over a ridiculously large area. And we are just getting started!

By building an ecosystem of algorithms, developers, data partners, and customers, we have a vision of enabling a whole new set of applications that leverage enormous quantities of data along with computation at a scale like never before. As Facebook publishes its results to the community, we aim to make them available on GBDX platform to allow others to build on them and use them to inform their own analysis. Further, we will be placing DigitalGlobe created population estimation tools and feature detection tools at your fingertips for comparison, building on, and innovating.

The industry is at a critical junction where cloud computing and advancements in deep learning are coming together. With accurate content of our planet that is being updated daily and our GBDX platform, we are putting data and our platform at this technological intersection. We can’t do it alone, though. All of you developers, startups, and enterprises are invited to join our GBDX Beta – we can’t wait to see what you will do!

To learn more about GBDX, visit: developer.digitalglobe.com/gbdx/

Dr. Shay Har-Noy is DigitalGlobe’s Vice President & General Manager, Platform

Get invited to the GBDX beta!

(India, 30 Dec 2016) The declared use made of earth observation satellites (Cartosat Series) for facilitating the surgical strikes conducted across the Line of Control (LoC) in September 2016 represents a new precedent. India’s proactive action caught the infiltrators as well as the supporting Pakistani establishment by surprise, in both military and policy terms. However, with no subsequent change in the Pakistani establishment’s strategy of sponsoring and facilitating cross-border terrorism, sealing the Western border is being seen as the next counter step. The Home Minister has announced the government’s intent to seal the border by 2018.

Although sealing the entire border would be a significant challenge mainly due to variations in the terrain and topography, the use of remote sensing systems provides one of the more effective means to overcome it. Attempts at infiltration could be detected by using low earth orbit surveillance satellites, which would in turn enable the blocking of infiltrators through suitable force deployment. In this regard, the active deployment of Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) which were reportedly used in Operation Ginger in 2011, and High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAVs that are currently under consideration for procurement, will improve India’s surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Further, the deployment of high-resolution radar based imaging sensors with all-weather day and night observation capability in the form of the Synthetic Aperture Radar system (SAR sensor platform) would also be advantageous in both the surveillance and active reconnaissance roles. In the aftermath of the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India had benefited from cooperation with Israel in developing RISAT 2 and especially its SAR system. Today, the RISAT 1 and 2 are the only two declared SAR systems in India’s possession for all weather day and night capability with X band and C band sensor systems. India would need to increase the number of such satellites for continuous observation of the western border. In addition, the CARTOSAT is also available for imaging purposes. In fact, ISRO has acknowledged that CARTOSAT was used for imaging areas where surgical strikes were carried out.

Most of India’s present repertoire of 13 operational remote sensing satellites with earth observation payloads, including the RISAT and CARTOSAT series, are assumed to be capable of providing high-quality earth observation imagery ranging from 50m to sub-meter resolution. These have swath coverage in the panchromatic range, from 10 kilometres on the CARTOSAT Series to 250 km in the RISAT series.

Since satellites travel over an observation area in an elliptically linear manner, the curves of a land border are passed over by the satellite in a direct overhead elliptical orbital motion from north to south descending or south to north ascending direction with their respective inclination, azimuth and elevation settings. At a known velocity of 7.5 km/s, these satellites pass over the entire length of the observed Area of Interest (AoI) over the western border of India in three to four minutes or even less. A shorter target region like the border in Jammu & Kashmir would mean an even lesser time for the satellite’s orbital pass. Added to this is the fact that low earth observation satellites do not provide continuous 24×7 observation of the same AoI. On each of its flights over any surface on the earth, the satellite takes snapshots or close earth observation high-resolution images of the area it is ground tracing and this process occurs 14 to 15 times a day (like in the case of Risat-2 satellite), but it may not pass over the same AoI.

The satellite coverage of an AoI, while making an adjacent orbital pass, is dependent on side looking capability of the sensor, its discernible range and angle of view, and the footprint of the satellite. Then there is the aspect of revisit time that allows surveillance for a given period of time till the satellite passes over the same region again. Therefore, the constant monitoring of the AoI requires a constellation of satellites.

At present, there are no satellite constellations that could form a contiguous chain of observation systems to monitor a designated target continuously. Hence, most scenes are individual or a series of observed images. These observations are then analysed with patterns and feature identification processes using photogrammetry tools and other visual aid and identification and digital image processing methods. This process along with inputs from other systems like ground radars and aerial surveillance platforms like the Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems (AEWACS), manned posts, aerial reconnaissance that render round the clock surveillance capabilities provide confirmation or build the overall picture of the situation.

Given all this, India would need more than one satellite constellation. It would require multiple satellites that repeat their observation of a target area; ideally one after the other in a contiguous form so that one satellite is always present over the AoI. To meet that objective, preferably smaller satellite systems at very low earth orbit to enable short revisits and repeat cycles would be ideal. The construction of nano and pico satellites is within India’s technological capability. It is highly recommended that a range of nano and pico satellites be manufactured and their employment integrated with the border management system.

(*) Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

Source

Oil fire smoke billows across Iraq’s Mosul District in this dramatic imagery from UrtheCast’s Deimos-2 satellite, captured yesterday, Oct. 18.

The smoke covers part of the city Qayyarah, about 35 miles south of the city of Mosul, along the West Bank of the Tigris River. Mosul is the last stronghold of the extremist group ISIS in Iraq — and it’s here in Qayyarah where people flee to from Mosul, and where military forces are staged.

Also visible is a destroyed bridge that once crossed the Tigris River.

More info

Built-up areas on the Earth have increased by 2.5 times since 1975. And yet, today 7.3 billion people live and work in only 7.6% of the global land mass. Nine out of the ten most populated urban centres are in Asia, while five out of the ten largest urban centres are in the United States. These are some of the numbers calculated by a new global database which tracks human presence on Earth.


Built-up areas on Earth have increased by 2.5 times since 1975. And yet, today 7.3 billion people live and work in only 7.6% of the global land mass. Nine out of the ten most populated urban centres are in Asia, while five out of the ten largest urban centres are in the United States. These are some of the numbers calculated by a new global database which tracks human presence on Earth, launched on 18 October 2016 by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III).

Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL)

While the growth of the global population is closely monitored by statistical offices, until now there has been little consistent, open and detailed information on the spatial distribution of people, and hardly any information on built-up areas with complete and global coverage. For the first time, the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) developed by the JRC with the support of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) makes it possible to analyse in a consistent and detailed manner the development of built-up areas, population and settlements of the whole planet over the past 40 years.

The GHSL is the most complete, consistent, global, free and open dataset on human settlements from villages to megacities. The datasets are based on more than 12.4k billions of individual image data records collected by different satellite sensors in the past 40 years. It combines satellite imagery on built-up areas, green areas and night lights with census data on population.

The GHSL can be used to check where and how people live, to measure the size of built-up areas and map their growth of over time, to calculate the density of cities and to analyse how green or how exposed to disasters urban centres are. It also provides a practical tool for the monitoring of the implementation of international frameworks.

Built-up area increasing globally, strongest growth in low-income countries

The GHSL shows that over the past 40 years, built-up areas increased by about 2.5 times globally, while the global population increased by a factor of 1.8. The changes in population and built-up areas show major regional differences. The strongest growth can be observed in low income countries. For example, over the past 40 years, the population of Africa tripled and the built-up area quadrupled. During that same period, the population of Europe remained stable, while the built-up area doubled.

Much of the expansion in population and built-up areas has taken place in locations that are at risk to natural disasters. For example, the world urban population of coastal areas has doubled over the last 40 years, from 45 to 88 million people.

Most densely populated urban centres are in low-income countries

Today, most of the world’s population is living in agglomerations with a density greater than 1.500 people per square kilometre and with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The GHSL counts more than 13,000 of these urban centres from the data for the year 2015. The ten most populated urban centres in the world are Guangzhou/Donguan, Cairo, Jakarta, Tokyo, New Delhi, Kolkata, Dhaka, Shanghai, Mumbai and Manila. Thus, nine out of the ten most densely populated urban centres are in Asia and seven are in low-income countries.

Urban centres with biggest built-up area are in high-income countries

Los Angeles is the largest urban centre in the world, with its built-up area extending over 4 734 km2, followed by Tokyo, Jakarta, Guangzhou/Donguan, New York, Chicago, Johannesburg/Pretoria, Dallas, Miami and Osaka. Consequently, eight out of the ten largest urban centres are in high-income countries and five of them are in the United States.

The different growth trends in the different continents lead to an unequal distribution of built-up per capita globally, the built-up area per capita in urban clusters in Northern America being almost ten times that of Asia.

Vegetation in urban clusters increased by 38% in 25 years

Large regional and income inequalities are reported in accessing electricity, as observed from night light emissions of urban centres. At the same time, a relative decline of night light emissions can be observed in urban centres of high income countries, possibly related to the implementation of environmental protection and energy saving policies. According to the evidence collected by the GHSL, our urban centres, towns and suburbs are becoming greener: the average intensity of vegetation associated to built-up areas in the whole urban clusters of the planet has increased by 38% in the past 25 years.

Atlas of the Human Planet

The GHSL is the core baseline data supporting the first release of the “Atlas of the Human Planet,” an international collaborative effort within the Group of Earth Observation (GEO) Human Planet initiative. It aims to support the monitoring of the implementation of the post-2015 international frameworks: the UN Third Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III, 2016), the post-2015 framework on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (DRR).

European Commission’s Joint Research Centre experts presented the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) open data tools and the analytical findings included in the “Atlas of the Human Planet 2016” at the Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador, on 17 — 20 October 2016.

Source
©Materials provided by European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC).