Planet: A Profound New Tool For Seeing Earth
Google is an almost unfathomably good tool for answering questions, but there are certain types of questions it can’t answer yet.
How many solar farms are being constructed in Africa right now? How many cars were on the road in Indonesia yesterday? How many ships passed through the South China Sea last week?
Currently, answering questions like these is difficult if not impossible, but you can imagine the usefulness of having this type of information on demand.
It’s hard to believe, but this is right around the corner.
As co-founder Will Marshall puts it, “Planet will index physical change on Earth the same way Google indexed the internet.”
Planet has accomplished Mission 1: to build and deploy a network of satellites that take medium to high-resolution images of every surface on Earth, every day.
Here’s what’s up next so we can start to envision the ways we’ll use this unprecedented new tool.
Beyond Mission 1
This year, as Mission 1 approached the finish line, Planet began to focus on the next stage of its project — building the platform where users can access the images and information captured by the satellite network.
Having access to the image archive is great, but what will make Planet’s platform extraordinary is its ability to provide useful insights to users.
The key element in this, that has come leaps and bounds since Planet’s inception, is the advancement in how computers identify objects in an image, like the way Facebook recognizes faces in your photos, which falls under the umbrella of machine learning.
Using this technology is what will allow users to find answers to questions like “How many oil pads are active in the middle east today?” and “How many wind turbines are there in California?”
Planet can likely be of use to each of the six key areas of cleantech. Here are some functions the platform is capable of today.
Planet in Action
- Monitor your assets
- Understand your competition
- Assess and mitigate disaster
- Anticipate global impact on your business
- See fields frequently anywhere
- Advance your precision
- Forest health monitoring
- Illegal logging tracking
- Forest operations planning
These are just a few of the markets Planet can service. Check out the rest here.
Profound Change Ahead
Climate change. Technological change. Social change. It’s happening. It’s coming. It’s inevitable.
Cleantech exists to build a sustainable world that will run forever. But building a world of our scale that runs forever is really hard, and that’s why we need really good tools like Planet to adapt to the changes ahead and thrive.
Follow along with Planet on its blog, request a demo, and explore the markets it’s servicing. See if it’s a tool that you, your team, your project, or your company can benefit from using.
And if you want to be kept in the loop about cool tools like Planet and more, be sure to subscribe to Cleantech Rising if you’re not already. We’re all in this together.
Act on Climate
You may have heard lately about the battle over net neutrality. It is the principle that internet service providers must treat all data on the internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. Ajit Pai, the former top Verizon lawyer in charge of the FCC, just announced his plan to completely repeal net neutrality. Like any industry today, the cleantech industry must rely on the internet to innovate, build companies, and create change. An internet free of censorship and extra fees by internet service providers is important for all of our future. If you agree, this site allows you to send a message to congress in just a few clicks that lets them know you’re opposed to repealing net neutrality.
