Saturday, December 11th, 2021
Now on the New York Stock Exchange
Satellite company photographs every corner of the world
From Jonas Bickelmann
With their company Planet, two ex-NASA employees want to “accelerate the development of mankind towards a more sustainable and safe world”. To do this, 180 satellites orbit the earth. With the help of their images, changes on the earth can be quickly recorded.
They are hardly bigger than shoeboxes, but still an extremely powerful tool: Over 180 satellites orbit the earth and photograph every corner of our planet day in and day out. The US company Planet owns these satellites called “Dove”. Since December 8th, Planet has also been traded on the New York Stock Exchange. For this, the company used the path of a merger with a so-called SPAC, a “special purpose acquisition company”. This merger partner, dMY Technology Group, was previously listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The new company will be called Planet Labs PBC. PBC stands for “Public Benefit Corporation”. This means that the company sets itself a goal which, in addition to the interests of the shareholders, must be included in the strategy. According to chief strategist Robbie Schingler, the goal of Planet is “to accelerate the development of mankind towards a more sustainable, safe and prosperous world by illuminating changes in the environment and society”.
This goal is “coded into the company’s DNA, so that management is forced to consider not only Stockholm’s interests, but also those of others who are affected by the company’s actions,” says Schingler. The former NASA employee founded Planet together with the current managing director Will Marshall, who also worked for NASA.
The PBC model will have to prove itself against such a powerful and potentially dangerous technology to prevent misuse of the data. Satellite surveillance is also used for military and secret service purposes. What is possible with US technology that is actually kept secret was shown in a tweet by former US President Donald Trump in 2019. Details on the image of an Iranian missile base could be seen that only appear vaguely in commercially available satellite images. At the moment the resolution of the planet satellites is not high enough to be able to recognize individual people.
In addition to the Dove satellites, Planet also operates other fleets that are designed for other tasks. “Pelican” is expected to launch further satellites as early as 2023. They will offer higher resolution, react faster to commands from Earth, and be able to photograph a location up to ten times a day. “Space is experiencing a renaissance,” says Schingler, “Business Punk”. “We’ve all heard of SpaceX’s new rockets and billionaires’ suborbital trips, but the real renaissance lies in the data we can collect from space and how we use it here on Earth.”
According to its own information, Planet currently operates around 200 satellites and generates annual revenues of $ 100 million. Schingler explains that the aim is to gain new customers in the coming years and make the data more widely accessible. “Planet targets new markets like insurance, commodities and finance.” His company offers data sets that have never been known before. This enables “quick, data-supported decisions for global transparency and sustainability.”
Schingler expects further growth. “We see a very near future in which change on earth will be recorded and cataloged on a daily basis in order to be accessible for decision-making – similar to how Google cataloged the Internet.” Google owns shares in Planet itself. In 2017, Planet took over the Google satellite subsidiary Terra Bella. The Berlin company BlackBridge with its RapidEye satellite fleet bought Planet 2015. The RapidEye satellites are no longer in use, but the Berlin control center continues to work – now for a NYSE-listed company.
This article is at first Business punk appeared.