Giving big business an eye in the sky: Orbital Insight taps new source of satellite data | ZDNet

There’s a growing number of satellites in the sky that can offer a different perspective of Earth, with startlingly detailed images and videos. That vantage point has clear value. Governments, for instance, can use it to track troop movements of their adversaries or manage water quality systems. Big businesses like Unilever can use satellite imagery to keep an eye on the plantations from which they source palm oil. Even big banks can use satellites to monitor ports, roads, and other places that offer insight into economic activity.

On Monday, the company Orbital Insight said it’s signed a new partnership with Satellogic to make high-resolution satellite imagery more readily accessible to governments and businesses. Orbital Insight is a nine-year-old firm that combines satellite images with data from other sensors, like ship transponders and IoT devices, to help organizations glean more insights from them. 

Orbital Insight’s platform can process a trillion pixels at once, using deep learning and AI to make sense of it all. For instance, the company’s platform could analyze millions of images of China to understand which cities are growing. It would do so by automating the process of detecting shadows, determining how big the buildings are, and putting those kinds of trends together at scale to find clear conclusions.

Orbital Insight’s customers include Unilever and other consumer goods companies, Chevron and other energy and industrial companies, the US Air Force and other defense and law enforcement agencies, as well as Deutsche Bank and other financial firms.

“We never have enough imagery, we never have enough data,” Orbital Insight founder Jimi Crawford says in a video on the company website.

With its new Satellogic deal, Orbital Insight’s platform will have access to new high-frequency, high-resolution collections of satellite imagery and full-motion video. This will allow Orbital Insight customers to increase the number of times they examine points of interest, see a more granular picture and get deep insights that weren’t possible before.

Satellogic currently has 22 operational satellites in low earth orbit with plans to launch up to 12 more by the end of the year. The company aims to expand its constellation to more than 200 satellites by 2025 for daily global coverage of the entire surface of the Earth.

“Our mission is to enable greater access to critical Earth Observation data,” Satellogic CEO Emiliano Kargieman said in a statement. “Working with Orbital Insight extends our reach, making our data available to more customers across diverse fields who need to know how the world around them is changing.”