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Silicon Valley startups in forefront of new space race
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25062336/silicon-valley-startups-forefront-new-space-race
Silicon Valley startups in forefront of new space race
By Patrick May
POSTED: 02/04/2014
Prepare yourselves for the Greatest Show Not on Earth.
Offering us all a front-row seat for planetary images that could make Google Earth seem so last decade, a slew of Bay Area startups have begun launching small, relatively inexpensive satellites into space. They lug powerful cameras that send back pictures and video, and those images soon could dramatically change the way we perceive our orbital home.
"It's totally an Earth-observation space race out there," says Stanford University professor and global ecologist Greg Asner. "With the cost of putting a satellite into orbit dropping because of cheaper materials and so many competing commercial launch ventures, a lot of really cool innovation has begun to happen."
The possibilities are intriguing: For the first time, Earthlings will be able to peruse high-resolution satellite images of their planet, both photographs and videos, practically in near-real time. Then, by using readily available online mapping tools to enhance the visual data, users essentially could create storylines to show things such as environmental degradation to rain forests, human and wildlife migration patterns, and political crises such as the Arab Spring, pretty much as they unfold.
<snip>
There's also a strong drive for democratizing space under way, as firms such as UrtheCast pledge to offer free the same images that until recently only well-heeled corporate entities could afford. Many of the aerospace scientists behind these startups want to use satellite technology to help save the Earth, documenting troubling trends such as melting ice caps and coastal erosion in the hopes they can be remedied.
Seeing ourselves from space in more detail also will profoundly change the way we perceive the planet, says Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and a member of Planet Lab's board of directors. That iconic "blue marble" photograph of Earth taken in 1972 from Apollo 17, he says, sparked "an epiphany that made us all realize the fragile lifeboat we live on. Now, nanosatellites and the daily access to imagery of the planet will create a Zeitgeist impact as we see ourselves as truly global citizens."
<snip>
Silicon Valley startups in forefront of new space race
By Patrick May
POSTED: 02/04/2014
Prepare yourselves for the Greatest Show Not on Earth.
Offering us all a front-row seat for planetary images that could make Google Earth seem so last decade, a slew of Bay Area startups have begun launching small, relatively inexpensive satellites into space. They lug powerful cameras that send back pictures and video, and those images soon could dramatically change the way we perceive our orbital home.
"It's totally an Earth-observation space race out there," says Stanford University professor and global ecologist Greg Asner. "With the cost of putting a satellite into orbit dropping because of cheaper materials and so many competing commercial launch ventures, a lot of really cool innovation has begun to happen."
The possibilities are intriguing: For the first time, Earthlings will be able to peruse high-resolution satellite images of their planet, both photographs and videos, practically in near-real time. Then, by using readily available online mapping tools to enhance the visual data, users essentially could create storylines to show things such as environmental degradation to rain forests, human and wildlife migration patterns, and political crises such as the Arab Spring, pretty much as they unfold.
<snip>
There's also a strong drive for democratizing space under way, as firms such as UrtheCast pledge to offer free the same images that until recently only well-heeled corporate entities could afford. Many of the aerospace scientists behind these startups want to use satellite technology to help save the Earth, documenting troubling trends such as melting ice caps and coastal erosion in the hopes they can be remedied.
Seeing ourselves from space in more detail also will profoundly change the way we perceive the planet, says Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and a member of Planet Lab's board of directors. That iconic "blue marble" photograph of Earth taken in 1972 from Apollo 17, he says, sparked "an epiphany that made us all realize the fragile lifeboat we live on. Now, nanosatellites and the daily access to imagery of the planet will create a Zeitgeist impact as we see ourselves as truly global citizens."
<snip>
