Planet Labs: The Big Picture - by Tim
Data is essential to decision makers. The desire to make better decisions fuels an ever-growing appetite for more (and higher quality) data. To meet this demand, new datasets are created (and added to) every day. Many of these measure, in some way, the activities of humans on the internet. We have little data, however, on the activities of humans on Earth. Planet aims to solve this problem. Earth observation (“EO”) uses remote sensors to measure elements (both visible and invisible to the human eye) on Earth’s surface. Different sensors produce different results, but the most common is a satellite-based telescopic camera capturing an image, from which data is extracted via the pixels. This article focuses on this method: what is known as optical EO. The roots of EO date back to 1858 (shortly after the invention of photography in 1826) when Gaspard Felix Tournacchon took pictures from a balloon and sold it to the French military. Years later, the invention of the airplane made aerial ph
Planet Labs: The Big Picture How Planet Labs disrupted earth observation, upended the industry economics, and built a durable moat Dec 19, 2022 6 1 Share Data is essential to decision makers. The desire to make better decisions fuels an ever-growing appetite for more (and higher quality) data. To meet this demand, new datasets are created (and added to) every day. Many of these measure, in some way, the activities of humans on the internet. We have little data, however, on the activities of humans on Earth. Planet aims to solve this problem. Junma Solar Power Station (“the world’s largest sola
Explore this link on the map →saved by
related reading
- The Startup That’s in Charge of the Biggest Private Satellite Fleet | MIT Technology Reviewtechnologyreview.com
- Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology.stratechery.com
- The Satellite Renaissance | Contrarycontrary.com
- To Boldly Go: The Case for Space Datacentersnewsletter.semianalysis.com
- Landsat - NASA Sciencescience.nasa.gov
- Will We Really Put Data Centers in Space?forethought.org
- Economics of Orbital vs Terrestrial Data Centersandrewmccalip.com
- A Stargate for Data - by willdepue - Will DePuewilldepue.substack.com
- State of Data (Jan 2026)seancai.com
- Registry of Open Data on AWSregistry.opendata.aws
- Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories now – Casey Handmer's blogcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
- To Boldly Go: The Case for Space Datacentersnewsletter.semianalysis.com