A new Seattle-area startup wants to launch the largest satellite-imaging constellation ever deployed to help take pictures and videos of the Earth.
BlackSky Global today announced plans to send satellites into mid-latitude orbits — six in 2016, 60 by 2019 — and provide customers in a variety of industries with images of the planet in near real-time.
BlackSky founder and CEO Jason Andrews described the company as a “Google Earth Live” that aims to democratize access to satellite imaging data.
“BlackSky was founded with the goal of providing an evolving infrastructure for understanding our planet in near real-time, and making imaging data open and available to more people and organizations,” Andrews explained. “We saw a huge market opportunity as high demand exists for this information across many industries, but access to high-resolution imagery has traditionally been inflexible with slow delivery rates.”
BlackSky is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceFlight Industries, a six-year-company also based in Tukwila that has raised more than $28 million to date from Chugach Alaska Corp., RRE Ventures, Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures and Razor’s Edge Ventures.
SpaceFlight Industries, which also helps the U.S. government and other customers launch small satellites on larger space transportation vehicles, will use some of that funding to build and launch satellites for BlackSky. Andrews, also CEO of SpaceFlight, previously described SpaceFlight as a “space logistics company,” arranging the rides for the satellites and doing the equivalent of stashing them in “overhead bins” and “nooks and crannies” on spacecraft.
BlackSky says it can provide high-resolution images not only faster than other companies — a couple hours versus days or weeks — but at one-tenth the cost of the current industry average. Its satellites will fly over most major cities 40 to 70 times a day.
“The satellite constellations of other commercial companies typically measure five satellites or fewer and are located in very specific, sun-synchronous orbits that are ideal for mapping,” Andrews said. “BlackSky Global’s 60 satellites will operate in mid-latitude orbits to provide more frequent revisit rates over 95 percent of the Earth’s populated area.”
Andrews noted that BlackSky’s constellation will complement existing service providers, “enabling a new level of global awareness by providing images of the Earth in near real-time.”
“We view these other companies as customers — not competitors — by providing them with additional, complementary imaging capacity that they can sell using their distribution channels,” he added.
Customers hail from a variety of industries like geography, research, resource management, intelligence, geospatial technology, weather, disaster response, human rights, construction and development, media, national security, defense and more.
“BlackSky’s customers use its services to enable or grow their businesses because they eliminate the need to capitalize a large constellation of high-resolution spacecraft,” Andrews said.
BlackSky makes money with a “pay-per-picture” business model and is developing a platform that will allow customers to rapidly request, receive, and interact with satellite imagery via the Internet. The company employs less than 20.
BlackSky joins a handful of other Seattle-based space companies, which include Boeing, Blue Origin, Planetary Resources, and others. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also set to open a Seattle office to build and launch satellites with the ultimate goal of funding the establishment of a city on Mars.
