How Tiny Satellites Are Changing The Way We Do Business
As the private space industry sends more nanosatellites into orbit, new data is shaping American farmland, Arctic shipping routes, and everything in between.
Fast Company | Kim Lightbody
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| Eye in the sky: A satellite from Planet captured a fire burning through one of the circular crop fields in the Toshka area of Egypt last year. Photo courtesy of Planet |
Space is a lot closer than it used to be. Companies like Planet and Spire are sending more satellites into orbit than ever before, providing an unprecedented near-real-time view of of every corner of the earth, from wheat fields in Egypt to glaciers in Antarctica. Here are five ways that companies are using this constant stream of data and images to bring more transparency and efficiency to different industries here on the ground.
Agriculture
A number of companies use satellite imagery to
predict annual farm yields—mostly focusing on major crops like wheat,
corn and soy—and produce estimations that are useful for farmers and
commodities traders alike. But Vinsight,
a small startup in California, has decided to instead focus on grapes
and almonds, two of the state’s most valuable agricultural products.
“Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t forecast those
crops,” says founder Megan Nunes. “We thought it made sense to apply the
technology to a sector that really needs it.” Grape and almond
farmers typically see a 30-40% error rate when they predict their
seasonal outputs, Nunes says. With Vinsight’s technology, which uses
machine learning to analyze satellite images, taking into account
external factors like location, weather, and historical performance,
farmers can get a yield prediction that is three or four times more
accurate. That information, says Nunes, can help them save on labor
costs, estimate their revenue for the year, and strike better deals with
buyers.
Another analytics company, FarmShots,
digs even deeper. The North Carolina–based startup analyzes specific
fields and patches of farmland, studying factors like light absorption
and land elevation to detect the presence of pests or diseases on
individual fields. FarmShots alerts its clients when there’s a problem,
and is currently building out its recognition algorithms to easily
identify the cause, such as fungus or trapped rainwater. Through a
recent partnership with John Deere, the company’s technology has been
built into tractors and other equipment, so those findings can
automatically direct machines on the ground. “You don’t want to
put on an even coat of fertilizer,” says FarmShots CEO Joshua Miller.
“We generate a map to instruct the machine to put less fertilizer on the
areas that are healthy and more on the areas that are unhealthy.”
Shipping
Before the era of CubeSats, government-owned satellites tended to cover only the more populated areas of earth—leaving remote
corners of the ocean in the dark. Shipping routes in the Arctic, for
example, weren’t covered by satellites or signal towers, which led to a
dearth of knowledge about who was passing through and what they were
doing. In March, Spire partnered
with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and Ball
Aerospace to monitor these blind spots. “The suspicion is that there’s
more traffic there than we realize,” says Nick Allain, head of Creative
and Brand at Spire. “Whose water are they actually traversing? Where is
an oil spill most likely to happen? Are ships meeting in the
middle and sharing things they’re not supposed to be sharing?”
The partnership will look to gather that information and come up with
solutions that prevent black-market trading and make Arctic sea routes
safer for shippers.
Farther south, Spire has used its capabilities to prevent
similar dangers in the Indian Ocean. It works with the Indonesian
government to cut down on illegal fishing activity by flagging ships
that are in restricted waters, and is currently testing a new capability
that can detect what kind of fish a boat is trawling for based on
its patterns at sea. “By looking at the pattern, you can say, ‘Wait,
they’re not supposed to be fishing for crab, they’re supposed to be
fishing for tuna,'” says Allain. “It was hard to track that before.”
Spire also provides its data to piracy forecasting companies, helping
them keep an eye on risky spots in the ocean.
Emergency Response
When
disaster hits—whether it be a tsunami or a mortar attack—satellite
images can be a crucial tool for governments and aid organizations
trying to assess the damage and direct relief efforts. Planet,
which has launched nearly 150 satellites into orbit, uses its images to
create maps that show an affected area before and after a disaster,
helping field workers quickly identify roads that have been blocked or
important buildings, such as schools or hospitals, that have been
damaged. “It can really increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of
response efforts,” says Tara O’Shea, a program manager for impact
initiatives at Planet. “Rather than having to send folks out into the
field to survey, which can be costly and time intensive, we can fulfill
that need with our imagery.” After a hurricane hit Haiti last fall, the
company jumped into action and produced before-and-after maps of the
country within days.
Around that time, Planet decided to form a disaster response
team focused on these efforts. Many aid organizations or community
groups don’t have staff members with image processing and geospatial
analysis capabilities, which are critical for turning the satellite
images into useful information. “People on the ground just need a
simple PDF that they can laminate and carry outside,” says O’Shea. To
get those assets to first responders faster, Planet worked with the Digital Humanitarian Network
to enlist about 20 volunteers from around the world; after receiving
training from Planet on how to use its platform and work with its
imagery, those volunteers were put on call, ready to respond to a
disaster at any time of day.
Environmental Research
For
researchers, the implications of satellite imagery are nearly
endless—they can be used to monitor everything from deforestation in the
Amazon to the annual bloom of tropical plants. In April, Planet
launched a new program to facilitate this work, opening its platform to
anyone with a university affiliation. Scientists from Stanford to the
University of Oslo use Planet’s images and data, as well as factors like
snowfall and sea level, to track the movement of Greenland’s Jakobshavn
glacier, which is famous for shedding massive amounts of ice into the
ocean each year. “It’s an area of intense scrutiny—it’s one of the hot
spots in the cryosphere community,” says Joe Mascaro, a program manager
at Planet. In Florida, Mascaro says, another researcher is using
Planet’s platform to study the effect of an invasive ant species in
India by surveying the health and population of Acacia trees.
Orbital Insight
has also launched initiatives in this space: for the past two years,
it has been working with the World Resources Institute to keep an eye on
deforestation. By looking for warning signs, such as new roads being
built in undeveloped areas, the company is hoping to prevent
deforestation before it happens.
National Security
The U.S. government uses satellites for more than just keeping an eye on North Korea. The Defense Department recently granted image analysis company Descartes Labs $1.5 million to study food security in the Middle East and North Africa. “The
US spends a lot of money surveying farmers, but if you go into
developing economies, those numbers don’t exist,” says cofounder and CEO
Mark Johnson. “Across the Middle East and North Africa, where it’s not
cash crops but crops that sustain the population, there’s no good way of
alerting people to a food shortage.”
To remedy that, Descartes is scanning farmland—both
large-scale operations and smaller fields in rural areas—for early signs
of famine, which can precede sociopolitical discord. That makes
it quicker, easier, and cheaper to identify such regions and try to
prevent conflict. “If we see a shortage, we can send in humanitarian
resources rather than waiting for famine and unrest,” says Johnson. “We
have all these pictures, and if we analyze them, we can send people in
at the right time to the right places.”
Economic Development
In 2015, Orbital Insight partnered with the World Bank to
study how well its technology could measure poverty rates and economic
growth, focusing on a small part of Sri Lanka. The two organizations are
now using those insights to test the technology in Mexico, using
satellite imagery, machine learning, and survey data to gauge how many
people live below the poverty line in different municipalities.
“Traditional household survey data is the gold standard for accuracy in
poverty measurement, but it is expensive to collect,” says David
Newhouse, Senior Economist, Poverty, at the World Bank. Surveys are also
conducted infrequently and often fail to accurately capture rural
areas.
Using satellite imagery to analyze an area as large as
Mexico will likely produce less accurate results than a household
survey, Newhouse admits, but the frequency with which it can be done
could still be beneficial. The Mexican government uses poverty maps to
direct social funding, but those maps are only produced every five years
or so, says Carlos Rodriguez-Castelan, senior economist and poverty
global lead at the World Bank. “With more frequent data, we could have a
better picture of people moving in and out of poverty, and who really
needs assistance in a particular area,” says Rodriguez-Castelan. “This
could be a critical tool to better target governmental programs and
investments towards those who need them the most, at a much more
granular level.”
