Welcome to a new and relatively short 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.
Curated Things
Major developments in EO from the past week
💰 Contractual Stuff: Funding, Contracts and Deals
Contracts
- Thermal infrared data provider SatVu was awarded a €1M contract from ESA to grow its commercial offerings in the energy sector;
- Thales Alenia Space won a contract for the implementation of NASA's Surface Biology and Geology - Thermal Infrared (SBG-TIR) mission;
- ESA awarded a contract to Italian geospatial service provider e-geos for in-orbit calibration of the AIS sensors of Sentinel-1C and Sentinel-1D satellites.
🗞️ Interesting Stuff: More News
- Thermal data based wildfire monitoring firm OroraTech signed a contract for a “responsive launch” with Rocket Lab ahead of the 2025 wildfire season;
- JAXA and Japanese IT firm NEC have demonstrated optical inter-satellite data relay between the Daichi-4 EO satellite and a data relay satellite;
- Three companies have been shortlisted by the Indian government to manufacture 31 satellites as part of the space-based surveillance programme;
- A report from Gallagher Re, one of the world’s largest insurance brokers, revealed that 2024 natural catastrophes set a new record for insured events.
🔗 Click-Worthy Stuff: Check These Out
- This article that presents the challenges of high-resolution carbon maps;
- This piece that discusses how EO and AI support sugarcane farmers;
- This platform that enables access to several open geospatial datasets;
- This blog that explains how just open data can be useful for EUDR reporting;
- This edition of Planet's Snapshots newsletter with examples of Jefferson Grid, the grid pattern used in the US dividing farms, towns and forests.
EO Summit: Get a Glimpse of the Program
Want to know what's happening at EO Summit this year? You can go check out the Program Overview now live on the website.
Some highlights:
➡️ Multidisciplinary panel discussions on some major commercial EO applications
➡️ Case study presentations from EO end-users across the four industry tracks
➡️ Plenary discussions on the state of EO and the journey from data to application
Early bird tickets are on sale. Save $200 and reserve your place before we sell out!
TerraWatch Insights
Exclusive analysis from TerraWatch
EO Use Cases: Value Drivers vs Operational Enablers
EO companies typically focus on two types of commercial use cases: “value drivers” and “operational enablers.”
📈 Value Drivers
EO use cases in the “value drivers” category lead to the creation of economic value for the organisation or result in cost savings due to the integration of EO.
Examples: Vegetation management, crop yield forecasting, parametric insurance, commodity trading, carbon markets, etc.
- EO application companies working on “value drivers” are more likely to find success in uptake given the potential RoI for end-users. These use cases require highly scalable solutions that work globally, but this would require huge upfront investments, especially for acquiring commercial EO data and building scalable data processing pipelines.
- Companies in this category are more likely to be acquired by a large enterprise (typically one of their customers) in the long run, especially after the value is proven.
📝 Operational Enablers
EO use cases in the “operational enablers” category may not result in value creation or cost savings but are required for organisations to function and comply with regulations.
Examples: Biodiversity risk, environmental impacts, deforestation, climate risk, emission monitoring, etc.
- EO application companies working on “operational enablers” are less likely to find success in uptake as organisations consider them to be overheads. These use cases are subject to regulatory uncertainty and unless requirements are clearly defined, end users may just choose to use open data (or a less expensive alternative) rather than pay for highly sophisticated solutions that use the latest advancements in remote sensing and AI.
- Companies in this category are more likely to be acquired by big consulting firms to support their existing clients to integrate EO for ESG reporting and sustainability advisory.
Scene from Space
One visual leveraging EO
Long Term Forest Monitoring Records
The animation below from NASA shows an area in southwestern Ghana, between 1989 and 2023, using Landsat imagery to show the decline of vital forest reserves. These habitats for primates, elephants, and other animals have shrunk due to factors like fires, mining, logging, and cocoa farming.
Landsat, the world's longest continuously acquired collection of medium resolution satellite imagery at a global scale, enables such long-term monitoring.
Until next time,
Aravind.
