Tasking Satellites isn’t expensive anymore!
With commercial launch, small satellites, and billions of dollars of investment, the Space sector is finally becoming accessible for the masses. Historically, large minimum areas and high prices made tasking high-resolution satellite imagery too expensive for most applications — especially those that require multiple images. Today, new constellations of high-resolution satellites are offering tasked imagery for under $250. Not only that but the imagery is usually delivered in a few days and occasionally within hours of tasking.
What does this mean?
Now it is cheaper to task a satellite than it is to send an employee out for a site visit.
After accounting for travel time, transportation, and other related expenses, the average site visit costs around $600. This doesn’t include the opportunity cost of the employee time spent driving.
What can I do with a satellite image?
Satellite imagery is great for seeing things visible from above. Common use cases for satellite imagery:
- Monitoring building construction progress.
Using satellite imagery, you can get a regular image of a site to see how progress is coming along. Satellite imagery is best for monitoring site preparation, foundation development, framing, enclosing buildings, rooftop installations, and landscaping efforts. - Agriculture. Agriculture was one of the earliest adopting industries of satellite imagery. Satellites can monitor for changes to fields including plowing, green-up, crop health, crop storm damage, crop type classification, and yield estimation.
- Conservation.
Land trusts and conservation organizations can use satellite imagery to monitor the health of vegetation and compliance with easements. Many organizations pay for easements of forested lands (often in remote rainforests) to offset carbon emissions. Satellite imagery enables these organizations to verify that these lands are being preserved as promised. - Monitoring Solar Installations. For utility-scale solar development, free satellite imagery is useful for detecting changes like site preparations and solar panel installation. High-resolution imagery can be used to detect the progress of site preparation, installation of rigging, retention ponds, and more clearly views of solar panel installation.
What is new about this?
In one way, nothing. We have been able to do this for years with satellite imagery — provided you had a HUGE budget. What is new is the ability to do this OnDemand, with the push of a button. It has never been easier to order images and it has never been cheaper to task a satellite.
What Does Monitoring Look Like?
Now that ordering imagery is faster and cheaper than ever before, Astraea has developed a Monitoring interface to allow you to quickly define a site, monitor it over time with free public data, and task high-resolution images as needed.
Not only that, but you can share comments with your team, enable AI to generate automated alerts, and compare images over time.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s easier than you think. The imagery team at Astraea can help you figure out which satellites to task, identify your technical requirements based on your use case, and manage the whole process for you.
Fill out our imagery request form to get started:
If you are interested in monitoring, you can click here to learn more about EarthAI Monitor:
