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UrtheCast’s New Satellites Provide Big Data
“This is our first step off the Space Station, and an exciting growth opportunity that will help to accelerate our UrtheCast Constellation plans, while populating our platform with powerful content,” explained Scott Larson, UrtheCast Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “By acquiring the entire Deimos satellite operations, two satellites and two ground stations, we’ve created another substantial revenue stream for the Company, and have improved our imagery archive with 6.5 billion square kilometers of Deimos imagery data.”
UrtheCast Corp. today acquired the Earth Observation business Deimos Imaging from Elecnor, S.A. for an aggregate price of €76.4 million. In addition to ownership and operation of the Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 satellites, UrtheCast has acquired satellite operations related to the collection, storage, processing, analysis, distribution, and licensing of imagery captured by these and other satellites. The combination of UrtheCast and Deimos operations is expected to significantly accelerate UrtheCast’s strategies related to distribution, web platform development, and the building out of the UrtheCast Constellation.
“We’re delighted to welcome 50 additional employees from the Deimos team, a highly experienced group with deep roots in the Earth Observation industry,” explained UrtheCast President and Chief Operating Officer, Wade Larson. “In combination with Deimos’ robust customer base, our business development program is poised for further growth this year. Deimos has an established customer base in Europe and Latin America, including the European Space Agency, as well as commercial customers in the agricultural, forestry, and land use industries. “
Fabrizio Pirondini, Deimos Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, added: “These are exciting times for the Deimos team. By joining UrtheCast, our team is ready to contribute to the shared vision of disrupting the Earth Observation industry.”
The Deimos-1 satellite
Launched: 2009
Estimated lifespan: 10 years
Imagery: 22m-resolution, 3-band imagery, with a 650-km swath
Collection rate: Data downloaded every 90 minutes, imagery collected 24/7
Collection capacity: 5,000,000+ square-kilometres per day
Facts:
- High revisit rates over mid-latitude regions
- Designed to monitor agriculture and forestry
- A member of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation
- Large coverage allows for identifying problem areas in crops
The Deimos-2 satellite
Launched: 2014
Estimated lifespan: 7 years
Imagery: 75cm pan-sharpened images, with a swath of 12km
Collection capacity: 150,000+ square-kilometers per day
Facts:
- Acquires imagery in either strip mode (images up to 1500 km long) or in spot mode, shifting between targets
- An agile platform, moving ±45˚ off nadir
- Wide-area acquisition mode can acquire 24-km wide strips of up to 200-km long in a single pass
- Once problem areas are located using Deimos-1 imagery, Deimos-2’s finer resolution allows for more detailed analysis of the same region
New York City, captured from Deimos-2 in August of 2014.
New York City, captured from Deimos-2 in February of 2015.
