Private Company Raises $13 Million for Fleet of Satellites to Monitor Earth's Changing Surface

Planet Labs has raised more than $13 million in funding in order to launch a fleet of imaging satellites designed to map the changes on Earth and in its ecosystems through images that will be made publicly available.

A space technology company formerly known as Cosmogia, Planet Labs was started in 2010 by former NASA scientists and describes itself as "a purpose-driven space and analytics company" with the goal of providing "universal access to information about the changing planet."

Earlier this year, the company launched two demonstration satellites to test technologies and operations on a space-based platform. Known as "Dove 1" and "Dove 2," the duo successfully accomplished their mission goals, opening the door to millions of dollars in funding from a number of venture capitalists.

Together, the satellites will provide, according to the company, a new image of the planet at unprecedented resolution and frequency.

In order to accomplish this, the those behind it selected a low orbit for the fleet as well as an optical resolution of 3 to 5 meters, which, according to the company, represents a scale that allows measurement of a tree canopy but does not "comprise individual privacy."

At this distance, the fleet will help monitor deforestation, improve agricultural yields and track natural disasters, among other things.

"Planet Labs will create an entirely new data set, with both humanitarian and commercial value," Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures said in a press release. "We've become used to having imagery of the entire Earth. What we haven't yet understood is how transformative it will be when that imagery is regularly and frequently updated."

As the founders explained to TechCrunch, there are a number of government and other private satellites already imaging the Earth. But some of these public-sector-funded satellites only take imaging pictures every month and at lower resolutions. Meanwhile, most of the private satellites are used for collecting military intelligence.

According to Steve Jurvetson, the managing director of Draper Fisher Jurveston which, like O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, has invested in the company's effort, the project represents another fact of an era of "unprecedented innovation in the space industry," largely spurred on by the privatization of space and satellite engineering.

As another example of such innovation, Jurvetson pointed to SpaceX, the brainchild of PayPal's Elon Musk and the first private company to work with NASA in the transportation of supplies to and from the International Space Station.