By Chris Forrester
The snappily-named ‘Servicing Diverse Customer Needs with Next-Gen EO and Geospatial Intelligence’ panel was part of SVSW’s Satellite Innovation 2-days of panel and keynote sessions and certainly brought delegates into the auditorium. Moderator Dr James Crawford (Chair and CEO at Orbital Insight) said the panel would be focused on Earth Observation (EO), and what was new and exciting.
Dr Crawford said the Ukraine war was a wake-up call for nations who realized they did not have their own access to EO and this was driving demand for both hardware and software.
He asked his panel: “What’s new in the past year? What has changed, and ongoing what might we be discussing a year from now?” The answer was that optical transfer was growing, although there were concerns about the costs of orbital relays and the efficiency of optical reception direct to Earth was still seen as potential problem.
Alan Greenberg (Co-founder/CEO at Loft Orbital) said that outside the usual major sovereign states, the smaller nations were no longer wanting to buy data in, but in the past year they wanted their own access to space and data.
Dr Shay Har-Noy (CEO/Edgybees) said the past discussions tended to be focused on whether this or that development would work. “That has changed. We are now talking about accuracy and specs and predictability and trust in the data. There was also a definite move so that even countries who would be seen as close compatriots were developing their own solutions.”
Dr Alex Saltman (CEO/GeoOptics) said today it was all about more capability on more satellites. “Satellites can gather 5-times more data than they can download. But if we can process while in orbit then there will be more changes. We work in the weather space and if we don’t deliver within 2 hours then we don’t get paid!” He explained his view that the world is waking up to the need for their own solutions.
Frank Backes (CEO/Capella Space) said he saw both sovereign requirements and ‘new’ markets only growing and demanding more data. “The question of whether there should be ground-based processing or processing while in orbit, but both will be explored and developed.” He told delegates that President Biden’s recent announcement of an agreement with the United Arab Emirates was an indicator that the US government was becoming much more cooperative with the commercial space industry. “Our job is to get data into the right market, at say $50 an image, then we will have responses. It is no good and uneconomic if it is $2000 an image.”
Dr Crawford said that real commercial segment growth and revenue would come when consumers could be accessed more directly. The response from Dr Shay Har-Noy said there was real interest from the insurance sector and assessing fire risks. The same applied to property tax EO observations, but repeatable, dependable data at a practical price is key.
