Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo

With a multitude of new satellite launches and company merger announcements, the Earth Observation (EO) industry has started the summer in buoyant mood.

China has driven the new launches with three separate deployments in just six days. These were:

3rd July: Five commercial small remote sensing satellites were successfully launched on board the Long March 2D rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province which is second northernmost launch site in China. The five satellites were:

• • Jilin 1 Kuanfu 01B satellite is designed to collect images along swathes greater than 90 miles, supporting applications including land and resource management, mineral development, and urban planning.
  • Three Jilin 1 Gaofen, or high-resolution, Earth-imaging microsatellites.
  • Xingshidai 10, another small satellite with an imaging instrument.

4th July: Fengyun-3E, the latest polar weather satellite was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using a Chang Zheng 4C rocket. This is fifth of this type of satellite operated by the China Meteorological Administration and the National Satellite Meteorological Centre. The Fengyun 3 group of satellites monitor global temperatures, humidity, cloud formations, and surface radiation elements with a swath width of 3 000 km which are used to support local and global weather forecasting. The satellites can also monitor the space environment, snow coverage, sea surface temperature and natural disasters.

9th July: The Ningxia-1 Group 2 mission was launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on board a Long March 6 rocket, and was carrying five remote sensing satellites for Ningxia Jingui Information Technology Company. These satellites, also known as Zhongzi, are believed to be commercial remote sensing satellites, designed to monitor EM spectrum signals.

Another launch worth noting is Napa-2, which is the second EO satellite for the Royal Thai Air Force, that was launched on the 30^th June  on SpaceX’ s Transporter 2 Small Satellite Rideshare. This satellite has an imager with seven visible and near-infrared bands, with a spatial resolution of 5 m. Napa-2 follows its predecessor into space, as Napa-1 was launched on the 3^rd September 2020 and both satellites will be used for defence and national security, monitoring water resources and air quality, alongside support for natural disasters.

If Asia is driving the launches, then it is America that is driving the company mergers, as two major American EO companies have announced their corporate intentions.

Planet, which operates the largest constellation of EO satellites allowing it to image all the Earth’s  land masses every day, announced its intention to merge with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) dMY Technology Group Inc. IV to become a  publicly-traded company sitting on the New York Stock Exchange. The new company will retain the name Planet and will be valued at approximately $2.8 billion after the merger.  Currently, the company delivers $100 million in annual revenue according to its latest account, and forecasts this to grow to almost $700 million by the end of 2026. However, the company is currently making a $11 million EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation & Amortization) loss in its latest accounts and will do for the coming three years, although it is expected to deliver almost $200 million in profit by the end of 2026.

Interestingly,  Satellogic has also recently announced a SPAC merger, this time with CF Acquisition Corp. V. Satellogic already has 17 satellites in orbit, and aims to scale its constellation to over 300 satellites to provide sub-meter resolution imaging of the Earth updated daily – arguably in direct competition with Planet. Satellogic’s estimated revenues for 2021 are $7 million, and this translated into a $32 million EBITDA loss. They forecast that by 2025 revenue will be $787 million and EBITDA will be a profit of $473 million. The merger values Satellogic at $850 million.

The space industry has had a rush of SPAC mergers with Astra, Rocket Lab and Redwire have all announced them recently and Virgin Orbit, the satellite launching spin off of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also considering one. Obviously, we can’t end a piece talking about Virgin Galactic without noting that Sir Richard Branson, beat his Amazon rival Jeff Bezos, to the edge of space this weekend and fired the starting gun on the future space tourism industry!