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| Example imagery of Amu Darya, Uzbekistan on September 30, 2019 from the next generation PlanetScope sensors. Image credit: Rob Simmon, Planet Labs (Accessed 8.11.2019 from: Planet Labs and @rsimmon) |
Improvements in space technologies are occurring at a rapid pace; this is enabled by the increasing power of computing available to us, as well as the developments in data storage and machine learning to process these data. It is the shrinking of technology and the mass reduction of costs which have enabled commercial imagery providers to manufacture, launch and provide data for the whole of the planet from a satellite the size of a shoebox. This formula is becoming the norm and companies are continually working to develop the capabilities of off-the-shelf technology for the monitoring of the Earth's surface from space. This is the ethos of Planet Labs, and one that they have recently expanded upon in a massive technological advancement phase for the company.
With this in mind, Planet recently announced, at the Explore 2019 Conference, the launch of a new series of 'CubeSats' which signify the beginning of a new Earth Observation constellation to go alongside their constellation of Doves and SkySat satellites (whose spatial-resolution improvement to 50cm was also announced at the event). Planet has been a pioneer in the mass launch and operation of 'CubeSats' - an area of space technology which has seen huge growth since 2013 (Hand 2015a), a trend that has since continued.
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| Planet Co-Founder and CEO Will Marshall announcing the improvements to the Planet Labs fleet and products (view the original tweet here) |
The so-called SuperDoves will increase the number of spectral wavebands from four (to five) to eight - currently the visible and near-infrared bands are collected, but the improvement to the sensor provides additional information on four more areas. These additional bands are: coastal blue, red-edge, yellow and green I & II. Availability of these extra wavebands provides further data to explore near-shore environments, plant health monitoring and crop classifications. The latest batch of these satellites are due for launch on November 20, 2019 (and will surely go alongside the company's famous launch day pancake breakfasts!); data will begin to be available to the mass market from early 2020.
These data will be directly comparable with publicly available open access data such as Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8. Having directly comparable data from a number of smaller satellites as part of a constellation, as well as the openly accessible virtual constellation at a number of scales will be extremely important for the advancement of environmental studies and understanding human environments.
Developments such as these are fantastic as they enable the scope of investigation to be scaled temporally with ease. However, they are only useful if they are easily accessible. This is the trade-off which many experience and I hope that these data are made available to those who need them the most. Planet Labs has precedent in this space as they have an Education and Research Program available to those wanting to use their data within research projects, and there has been movement to connect with organisations who are working to address key human rights issues, as well as collaborating with governmental organisations to support decision-making, for example, teaming with the State of California to support action on climate change.
Data abundance is commonplace, but the quality of the data and the implications for research is the real importance of announcements such as that by Planet. These data improvements provide the opportunity for research which will benefit people and the planet in a variety of ways; and whilst new bands are great, it is the opportunities which are afforded from their presence which provide the most exciting part of their developments personally. It will be interesting to continue watching the developments of Planet as a company from their launch as a Silicon Valley start-up (Hand 2015b), but perhaps more interesting will be the research and real-world applications which arise from the availability of these new SuperDoves.
More details on the latest announcements on the improvements to Planet data is available here!
Resources
Hand, E. (2015a). Thinking inside the box. Science, 348 (6231), 176-177.
Hand, E. (2015b). Startup liftoff. Science, 348 (6231), 172-177.
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