Will Marshall ends his TED Talk with a question – if you had access to visual data of the entire planet updated every day, what would you do? What problems would you solve and how would you use the data to make the world a better place? His TED Talk, Tiny satellites show us the Earth as it changes in near-real-time boasts a long title and is full of great ideas.
The problem with satellites, Will tells us, is that they’re big and expensive and take too long to build. Marshall’s company Planet Labs launched a flock of their Dove satellites in January 2014 and currently has 71 units circling the Earth and sending daily images.
Dove satellites are 10 x 10 x 30 centimeters in size, small and agile while built to be strong and precise. Solar panels generate the energy needed to run the satellite, designed to fold out of the body after the satellite has been launched.
Data is taken by the satellite’s cameras at a resolution between three and five meters. Each Dove completes approximately sixteen orbits in a day, beaming back continuous photographs of the Earth’s surface. Beyond generating visual images the satellites beam back information about the health of the unit itself, and software updates or modified instructions can be beamed up to the satellites.
There are several inspiring messages in Marshall’s talk. First, Planet Labs wants all of this visual data to be open source. Will hopes that this data will allow us to better understand the world and the changes happening on a small scale.
The company will make the data available to anyone and is taking names for developers who want early access to their API – the first group to access the data will receive the slick title of Planet Explorers. The company’s blog updates often with news about new partnerships, best practices, and a few posts detailing the losses and subsequent relaunches that occurred surrounding the twenty six Doves that were aboard Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket in October 2014.