EarthEye Space, the self-proclaimed ‘Uber Eats’ of Earth-observation data, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to expand its platform of open market satellite tasking.
“Solving accessibility, affordability and usability issues with geospatial data,” says satellite-tasking platform start-up EarthEye Space, the software developer “combines any of the 475-plus satellites across all sensor modalities,” says the company’s founder and CEO Shankar Sivaprakasam, to provide customers with information and insight from earth observation data.
Through this satellite connection, the company’s platform gives users access to a variety of sensors such as multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal infrared, full-motion video, greenhouse gases, automatic identification systems, RF-communication and synthetic aperture radar, and presents the information to the user. “The no-human-in-the-loop tasking makes on-demand and persistent Earth observation easy” says the start-up.
Machine Learning as a service
While users are able to visualise and compare multi-modal and multi-temporal data on a single screen, it can still be hard to know how to use it. This is why, along with presenting the raw Earth information, the EarthEye platform also helps users understand it.
“You task a satellite, and you get the data,” said Sivaprakasam. “Within two to three minutes we [can] extract the information from the data, and tell you the information of interest to you,” relying on computer vision and machine learning to draw out the insights.
"EarthEye Space has become the go-to self-service tasking platform in the short time since it was founded, two years ago," said Sivraprakasam to Electro Optics. "We offer unique multi-sensor direct tasking and near real-time information, providing situational awareness. Defence and intelligence, governments, forestry and plantations, telcos, space agencies, research institutes and start-ups [all] use the subscription platform."
Example use cases for fresh satellite data
Counting so many satellites and sensors as a data source, means a wide range of up-to-date geospatial data can be attained in moments, far quicker, cheaper and easier than sourcing the information from pre-existing studies. The applications for the service range from sustainability assessments, site surveys or monitoring, flood mitigation and early fire detection.
EarthEye Space’s collaboration with Mining3 points to one industry where the wider access to satellite data can have an important impact. The collaboration is to establish a Mining Space-Tech Centre of Excellence to deliver insight to the sector.
“It’s exciting to be involved in the endeavour of adapting space technology for Earth-based applications,” said Mining3 senior research engineer, David John. “Our collaboration with multi-sensor satellite platforms, combined with the integration of on-site sensing data, is set to deliver essential insights for the mining industry.
$1.5 million funding helps EarthEye expand its field of view
The recent funding received from tech investors and individuals will help EarthEye to access more data sources, expand its staff and improve computer vision and machine learning training algorithms, all with a view towards the expansion of the service “into Africa and the Middle East, followed by the USA in 2025,” said Sivaprakasam. “The investment not only validates our vision of transforming how intelligence from space is rapidly gathered and used by our customers but empowers us to accelerate our mission.”
