Welcome to a new edition of ‘Last Week in Earth Observation’, containing a summary of major developments in EO from the last week and some exclusive analysis and insights from TerraWatch.
Four Curated Things
Major developments in EO from the past week
💰 Contractual Stuff: Funding, Contracts and Deals
Funding
- Israeli EO-based emission analytics firm Momentick raised $5M in additional seed funding;
- BeZero Carbon, a carbon rating agency that leverages EO for carbon assessments, raised $32M in Series C funding;
- NatureMetrics, a nature intelligence startup that uses remote sensing and environmental DNA technologies raised $25M in Series B funding;
Contracts
- The US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency selected the following 13 companies for a $200M contract for five years as part of the Luno B program to provide EO analytics;
- Airbus US, BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, BlackSky, BlueHalo, CACI, Deloitte, Electromagnetic Systems, Maxar Intelligence, NV5 Geospatial, Planet Labs, Royce Geospatial, and Ursa Space Systems.
M&A
- Financial services enterprise Moody's is acquiring property insurance solution provider Cape Analytics, which uses remote sensing (aerial + satellite) data for modeling property risk.
Why it matters: I have written about how strategic, value-adding use cases of EO will continue to see higher adoption in commercial sectors such as insurance and financial services. This case study is yet another example of a backward vertical integration strategy focused on geospatial, in which a market leader acquires a EO-based service provider as it sees the technology bringing a lot of value to its future growth.
📈 Commercial Stuff: New Developments
Announcements
- Weather intelligence provider Tomorrow.io unveiled an upgrade to its global precipitation forecasting model, integrating data from its weather satellites;
Partnerships
- EO instrument manufacturer Dragonfly Aerospace signed a partnership with Australian EO company LatConnect 60 to provide infrared imagers for its planned constellation;
Launches
- SpaceX launched over 131 payloads on the Transporter-12 rideshare mission, three quarters of which happened to be EO satellites.
- Here is a breakdown of the EO satellites that were launched last week.
🗞️ Interesting Stuff: More News
- NOAA is interested in acquiring commercial EO data for new applications such as oil spill monitoring;
- China launched the first satellite of a remote sensing constellation for Pakistan;
- Xplore, a hyperspectral satellite startup launched its first satellite with SpaceX;
- Planet appointed a retired US Space Force executive to its board of directors, as the company seeks to expand its footprint in the defense market;
- Data from Chinese commercial weather satellites have been integrated into the country's meteorological agency system;
🔗 Click-Worthy Stuff: Check These Out
- This paper leveraging EO data showed how the Nord Stream subsea pipeline released over 485,000 tonnes of methane contributing as much to global warming as would have 8 million cars driven for a year;
- This report that consolidates the scientific advancements made using ESA satellites across atmosphere, ocean, polar and land monitoring domains.
One Discussion Point
Exclusive analysis and insights from TerraWatch
The State of Commercial EO Satellites
A brief discussion on the future of civilian EO programmes
At TerraWatch, we track at least 72 commercial satellite constellations, not including the sovereign national programmes and other government-led initiatives. The commercial sector continues to grow with an explosion of EO companies with satellites with supposedly better specifications than publicly funded missions.
The EO sector has evolved from primarily working with prime contractors on EO satellite development through traditional cost-plus contracts to procuring data from commercial EO companies through indefinite/defined data contracts. 2024 saw contract awards (totalling over $3B) for NOAA's GeoXO weather satellites, for commercial EO companies by NASA (a $476M contract), for thermal data providers for OroraTech and constellr by the Germany space agency DLR along with the complete funding allocation confirming the Copernicus Sentinel Expansion Missions.
While the trends on one side of the Atlantic appear to be nominal (with ESA's EO budget remaining steady), the other side is waiting to see the impacts of the new administration. The last edition saw several attempts to cancel NASA's Earth Science missions (the US Congress restored their funding) as well as funding cuts for NOAA. Some in the community assume that the future of EO will be driven by commercial satellites, and that we will see a decrease in funding for public EO missions, pointing to the growth of the private sector.
But, the reality is that the two publicly funded missions Landsat and Sentinel remain the gold standard for satellite imaging. These missions represent the benchmark for EO data and is also the reason why they are a key component of the dozens of EO foundational models, currently in development today, while also contributing billions of dollar in economic value.
While commercial EO may have started providing data with more advanced specifications, there is significant work to be done before they can replace publicly funded missions. 2025 will see some evolution in the interplay between the private sector and the public sector in the US, which may affect EO policies and investments in Europe and beyond.
This edition of the newsletter is brought to you by Geospatial Risk Summit
The Geospatial Risk Summit is a unique two-day event focused on how professionals in finance, insurance, supply chain, healthcare, and energy industries use geospatial data to manage physical and climate-related risks.
Join industry experts and innovators in breaking down silos, exchanging insights, and advancing our understanding of geospatial solutions for managing physical and climate risks.
Don't miss your chance to join the event on January 30, 2025, in New York City. Technical workshops on January 29th will see top data scientists, analysts, & engineers show off risk analytics applied to real world problems.
Use the code GRS25TerraW when you register to get a 10% discount. TerraWatch Space is one of the sponsors for the Cocktail Reception.
Scene from Space
One visual leveraging EO
Warmest Year on Record
Earth’s average surface temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis led by NASA scientists. The animation below shows 2024 in context with temperature anomalies since 1880. The values represent surface temperatures averaged over the entire globe for the year.
Until next time,
Aravind.
