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The latest news from the Terra Bella team
Nighttime HD Satellite Video
Friday, November 21, 2014
People and global businesses work day and night: so, too do Skybox Imaging satellites. Today we are pleased to showcase
nighttime HD video
from our first satellite, SkySat-1.
*Click on the 1080p HD toggle to see this video in full resolution* Bright lights, big city: the famous Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada at night as seen by Skybox Imaging’s SkySat-1 satellite from low Earth orbit on Thursday, March 27, 2014 at 10:42 p.m. local time, complete with flashing lights and moving cars. Notable sites visible in the scene include the Bellagio Hotel and its renowned fountain lake, and Paris Las Vegas’ brightly-illuminated model of the Eiffel Tower, located near the center of the video.
At Skybox, we're busy building out pixel and information services to help individuals and companies better understand our world and make better-informed, data-driven decisions. The polar orbiting imaging satellites that power our business spend about 40% of their time in the dark, so the ability to capture video at night means we can offer our users and customers insights into change occurring around the clock.
As seen in
Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) imagery from NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) mission
and
EROS-B night imagery from ImageSat
, the signatures of economic activity are readily observable after dark in the form of nighttime lights. The presence and time-dependent changes of these can provide insight for a wide spectrum of civil, commercial, and humanitarian use cases.
Applications of nighttime satellite imagery and video include:
Energy production and consumption estimation
Coastal and maritime domain awareness for shipping, fishing and trade
Industrial facility utilization and infrastructure assessment
Trade and transport traffic pattern analysis
Humanitarian crisis support
We are excited to share this announcement today and continue working with Skybox customers and partners to advance development of this and other innovative solutions using Skybox imagery and video.
Posted by Niko Milonopoulos, Skybox Data Analyst
Introducing Skybox for Good
Thursday, October 23, 2014
When we started Skybox in 2009 we knew that we had a tremendous opportunity to leverage our imaging capability for positive change in the world. We would be capturing the world at high resolution and with unmatched frequency. As soon as SkySat-1 was in orbit we began monitoring sites critical to our understanding of global climate change, such as the Helheim Glacier in Greenland.
18 August, 2014 | Helheim Glacier, Greenland | SkySat-1
We also partnered with organizations like the
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s Signal Program
, who used our imagery to help develop tools for
Internally Displaced Persons
camp management in Africa and the Middle East.
16 March 2014 | Yida, South Sudan | SkySat-1
I’ve always been impressed by how access to global satellite imagery through Google Earth and Maps has changed the way people see their world - from the cities they live in to faraway places. In my new role on the
Google Earth Outreach
team, I have been astounded by the way these tools have changed how
our partners
do their work and tell their amazing stories. I have also learned that one of the most frequent questions is “Can you get us newer images of this place?”
And I’m excited to say that now the answer is “YES, we can get new satellite imagery for you!” Today, at our annual
Geo for Good User Summit
, we announced the Skybox for Good program, under which we will contribute fresh satellite imagery to projects that save lives, protect the environment, promote education, and positively impact humanity. We’ve captured some images of Nagarkovil village in Northern Sri Lanka.
HALO Trust
previously cleared landmines in this area and used updated imagery to help verify that people are returning, having built 84 houses and cultivating over 40 hectares of agricultural land.
3 October, 2014 | Nagarkovil, Sri Lanka | SkySat-1
View
full image
in Google Maps
In this beta phase of the program, we will select a small group of organizations and provide the imagery they need to accelerate their work. The images collected for these partners are being made available publicly, under a Creative Commons By Attribution license (
CC BY 4.0
), for everyone to see and use. We’ve already started collecting a few images, which you can see on
this map
. Check out the images in West Virginia, where
SkyTruth
and
Appalachian Voices
are monitoring and measuring the rapid expansion of mountaintop-removal (
MTR
) mining which is devastating forests and communities across Appalachia, visible in the image below, right next to the popular hiking trails of Kanawha State Forest.
2 October, 2014 | KD-2 Mine, West Virginia | SkySat-2
View
full image
in Google Maps
Google Earth Outreach gives nonprofits and public benefit organizations the knowledge and resources they need to visualize their cause and tell their story. In the future, we hope to expand the Skybox for Good program to allow many more non-profit organizations and public interest groups to benefit from the use of Skybox data.
As part of Google, we are inspired by the opportunity to up our game and make a difference at a much larger scale.
Follow us
@earthoutreach
for updates as we expand the program.
Posted by Julian Mann, Skybox Co-Founder and Developer Advocate, Google Earth Outreach
The Transformation of Burning Man
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Burning Man takes place at the end of August every year in the barren and remote Black Rock Desert of Nevada. The weeklong festival is described by its organization as “an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.” Earth-bound photographers have chronicled the legacy of art, technology, design, and fashion at the event over the years, but we at Skybox wanted to know if we could capture the transformation of the city from space, with our constellation of SkySats.
This is the result: A full-fledged city of population 70,000, “Black Rock City” is built up in a matter of days, experienced for a single week, and disassembled just as quickly, leaving no trace. It has an airport, a DMV, a hospital, newspapers, and a Department of Public Works.
The titular event is the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy (“the man”), which was set alight on the evening of Saturday, August 30th:
Photo: David Randall
“Theme camps” are participant-built villages that vary greatly in scale and concept - the realization of the creators’ whims and creativity:
The Burning Man organization (Black Rock City LLC) creates the infrastructure of Black Rock City, including the round Center Camp, which serves as a city center and town hall plaza of sorts. First to be set up and last to be taken down, the infrastructure of Black Rock City provides the services and structure to the event that keep it organized and safe.
“The Temple of Grace is intended to be a spiritual and sacred space for memorials, reflection, celebration, and to commemorate life transitions...The community comes to write their memorials and place tokens of their transitions, and it is burned at the end of the festival in a tradition of releasing them by the immolation of the temple.” (The Temple Crew)
Caption
Photo: David Randall
Photo: John Curley
Burning Man attracts artists, amateur and professional, who build installations at great scale and with fleeting lifespan:
Add caption
Photo: David Randall
Black Rock City is built around a unique, and trademarked, radial design:
Explore the transformation of Burning Man yourself in Google Maps Engine
(Hint: Try the layers)
Jon Zemel, Product Manager, Analytics and Ground Software
IDP Camp Development in Juba, South Sudan
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Amid the flurry of excitement that has come with the
launch of SkySat-2
, we’ve been continuing to observe interesting sites around the world with SkySat-1, noting signatures of economic, environmental and geopolitical activity in some rapidly-changing areas of the world. One such location of interest is Juba, South Sudan.
This capital city of conflict-affected South Sudan has been home to thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) seeking safety from internal violence, which has persisted since the South Sudanese Civil War began on December 15, 2013. The Tomping base of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (
UNMISS
) at the Juba International Airport has provided shelter and safety to IDPs since the war’s outbreak. Using SkySat-1 data from December 2013 to July 2014, we’ve been able to observe recent changes in the IDP camp area and shelter density as populations and resources continue to evolve.
Fig. 1: IDP camp development in Juba, South Sudan from December 28, 2013 to July 12, 2014. Color-coded overlays defined in the legend depict camp aerial extent defined by the presence of temporary shelters and related camp infrastructure observed in the imagery. Pre-SkySat-1 measurements from the first three dates were acquired from the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Program (UNITAR/UNOSAT).
The ability to take imagery of the same area over a short period of time illustrates that while the overall camp area has continued to expand, shelter densities in some areas have declined. After the initial influx, UNMISS was able to spread the IDPs out and start moving them to the nearby UN House to the south. According to Brittany Card at the
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
(HHI),“Remote sensing analysis of IDP and refugee camps is not only useful for those utilizing satellite imagery to monitor complex humanitarian disasters, but also for ground responders assisting vulnerable populations.”
Fig. 2: Time-dependent IDP camp development in Juba, South Sudan. See Fig. 1 for context description and key.
The animation and accompanying graph above show the growth of the camp over a period of seven months, portraying how the IDP shelters have been organized and rearranged over time. Note that the top left-hand corner only has developed during the last month or so.
At Skybox, we aim to empower decision makers - from first responders to soy bean farmers - with timely information derived from our growing constellation of highly capable small satellites. With our imagery, the possibilities are endless.
Sources:
UNITAR/UNOSAT UNMISS IDP Camp Expansion Map
Move to new UN IDP camp
UNMISS Homepage
Posted by Christina Krawec, Geointelligence Analysis Intern
Launch + 48 hours: SkySat-2 First Light
Thursday, July 10, 2014
We are pleased to showcase the first images from SkySat-2. These images of Bangor, Maine and Port-au-Prince, Haiti were taken within 48 hours of launch and are not yet calibrated or tuned.
In the last two days, we have progressed through initial commissioning activities. SkySat-2 system tuning and calibration is expected to continue for several months. SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 operations are conducted from our 24/7 mission operations center in Mountain View, CA.
With the SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 constellation we are excited to continue pushing the envelope for increasingly timely high-resolution imagery, HD video, and analytics.
We are incredibly proud of our team that has worked tirelessly to turn a concept of a satellite design on a napkin, to a clean room with two satellites, to the early stages of a constellation in orbit. Each person has played an important role in getting us to this point and the team's signatures are engraved on the inside panel of SkySat-2, now zipping around the Earth at 7 kilometers / second.
Onwards!
SkySat-2 image of Port-au-Prince on July 10, 2014
SkySat-2 image of Bangor, Maine on July 10, 2014
SkySat-2 Launched!
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
We are happy to announce the launch of SkySat-2 this morning aboard a Soyuz-2/Fregat rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. We made contact with the satellite on the first pass.
Below is an image taken by SkySat-1 of SkySat-2's launch pad on July 7, 2014 and a photo taken by Roscosmos of the Soyuz-2/Fregat rocket on July 8, 2014.
Onwards and upwards!
Skybox Imaging + Google
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Update on 8/1/14: The deal has now closed.
We’re thrilled to announce that Skybox Imaging has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!
Five years ago, we began the Skybox journey to revolutionize access to information about the changes happening across the surface of the Earth.
We’ve made great strides in the pursuit of that vision.
We’ve built and launched the world’s smallest high-resolution imaging satellite, which collects beautiful and useful images and video every day. We have built an incredible team and empowered them to push the state-of-the-art in imaging to new heights. The time is right to join a company who can challenge us to think even bigger and bolder, and who can support us in accelerating our ambitious vision.
Skybox and Google share more than just a zip code. We both believe in making information (especially accurate geospatial information) accessible and useful. And to do this, we’re both willing to tackle problems head on — whether it’s
building cars that drive themselves
or designing our own satellites from scratch.
We are who we are because of the incredible customers, partners, & advisors who have given their time, wisdom, resources & encouragement over the years. To the people who believed in us before anyone else, you know who you are. Thank you.
In addition, we wouldn’t be here without the unwavering support of our friends and family. This has been an incredible journey, and we look forward to working with our new Google family and the world at-large to write the next chapter.
We should point out that our agreement with Google, which is subject to customary approvals and closing conditions, hasn’t closed yet. So in the short term, it will continue to be business as usual at Skybox.
Onwards and Upwards!
The Skybox Team
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