Ashlee Vance, The Satellite Swarm.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... race-to-cover-earth
Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Small-satellite startups aim to cover the action 24/7
(b) "Commercial satellite imaging is dominated by two big players, DigitalGlobe (DGI) and Airbus Defence & Space (ADS). * * * These setups are impressive but don’t quite operate at Internet speed," which take "the few weeks" to supply satellite photos.
(i) DigitalGlobe, Inc (a public company traded at NYSE; founded in 1992 by Walter Scott; Headquarters Longmont, Colorado [in Boulder county]) Wikipedia
(ii) Airbus Defence and Space
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Defence_and_Space
(a division of Airbus Group; formed in January 2014)
, whose headquarters is at
Toulouse
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toulouse
(Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo positioning system [among others]; [the city name is] of unknown meaning or origin)
(c) "Instead of a few of the truck-size, nine-figure satellites the big companies use, the startups [Skybox Imaging and Planet Labs] are building dozens of satellites that cost from hundreds of thousands to a few million dollars each. * * * Like Planet Labs, Skybox hitches rides on rockets with its satellites designated as secondary payloads, at a cost ranging from about $300,000 to $4 million per satellite. * * * [Planet Labs] wouldn’t disclose pricing. Skybox says per image prices start in the hundreds of dollars, and annual charges for the most recent photos could run into the tens of millions. DigitalGlobe, whose sixth satellite goes up this year, boasts ultraclear images with 50-centimeter resolution and says it can do even better."
(i) Skybox Imaging (privately owned; founded in 2009; based in Mountain View, California) Web information
(ii) Planet Labs (a private company; founded in 2010; based in San Francisco) Wikipedia
(iii) "nine-figure satellites" refers to the cost of each satellite: more than $100 million.
(d) The graphic talks about Planet Labs' "cigarette carton-size cameras."
For cigarette carton, see cigarette pack
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_pack
(A carton of cigarettes usually containing ten (10) packs, totaling two-hundred (200) cigarettes) |