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

Looking at the launches and Earth Observation (EO) partnerships that have been occurred at the end of March, together with the next SpaceX rideshare mission which is scheduled for this coming Tuesday and is expected to have EO missions onboard.

Launches Occurred

On the 31^st March, China launched the Yaogan 34-04 EO satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. This is the fourth in a series of satellites launched over the last two years. The satellite was developed by the Eighth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation Co., Ltd and is believed to be an optical remote sensing satellite whose data will be used for applications such as territorial survey, urban planning, land right confirmation, road network design, crop yield estimation, disaster prevention and mitigation.

Also from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, on the 2^nd April, the maiden flight of the Tianlong-2 rocket took the Jinta satellite into orbit. Developed by Hunan Hangsheng Satellite Technology Co., Ltd, this is a remote sensing satellite with two cameras.

Launches Planned

Next Tuesday, 11^th April, is the planned launch date for the next SpaceX rideshare mission on the Falcon-9 rocket. Although, the final manifest is still to be announced, there appears to be a number of interesting EO satellites onboard:

• GHOSt-1 and GHOSt-2: These are the Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellites developed by Orbital Sidekick, which we discussed in more detail last week.
• Taifia-1: This is an EO satellite for the Kenyan Space Agency. It is expected to provide data for decision support linked to agriculture and food security, natural resources management and environmental monitoring. The satellite has been entirely designed and built by Kenyan engineers, and is expected to be the first of a constellation for Kenya.
• Ä°mece: A Turkish EO satellite with an optical camera and sub-metre spatial resolution..
• Umbra-SAR 06: The latest launch for Umbra Lab, which is an X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite offering imagery at a spatial resolution of 25 cm over a 16 sq km area.
• FACSAT 2: A nanosatellite built by the Fuerza Aérea Colombian, which carries an imager with a 5 metre spatial resolution, with data expected to be used for cartography and topography.
• 3 Greenhouse Gas Satellites Demonstrators – GHGSat C6, C7 & C8, also known as Mey-Lin, Gaspard and Oceane respectively. These microsatellites run by GHGSat Inc carry hyperspectral SWIR imaging spectrometers that monitor greenhouse gases.

Earth Observation Partnerships

At the end of last month, two satellite operators announced plans to partner with downstream EO companies.

Firstly, Planet announced its intention to acquire the Slovenian company Sinergise Labs. The companies have worked together over the last seven years, initially with Sinergise being a Planet reseller, and then working together offering Eo data to Slovenia’s Agency for Agricultural Markets and Rural Development. Sinergise is a downstream focussed company providing data analytics and services through its Sentinel Hub. This acquisition, expected to occur in the next three months, both expands Planet’s European operations and continues Planet’s vertical integration that support it offering data analysis, services and other value add products on the back of its data.

The second announcement came from Satellogic, who are going into partnership with SkyFi, an EO data provider. SkyFi offer an app meaning individual users can task satellites from their devices to acquire the precise location they are interested in. The relationship with Satellogic will allow users to directly task Satellogic’s thirty-strong satellite constellation. It’s expected that the partnership will offer additional added value services over time, enhancing the capability of the offering to users of the SkyFi app.

These developments are inevitable for the industry, but nonetheless concerning for small and medium (SME) sized downstream EO companies. As satellite operates realise it is not easy to make a profit purely from the provision of imagery, particularly with free-to-access data such as Sentinel and Landsat available, vertical integration moving into the downstream activities and data analytics offers opportunities to provide the entire value chain to customers. This trend is likely to increase, meaning that downstream SME companies will need to offer niche, unique or added value products, or face fighting in a market with many larger competitors.