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00:00My the did. This launch is gonna be breaking records or satellites that we're putting on we'll become the largest constellation of satellites ever launched in human history . Two times we've put our satellites on the rocket and they didn't make it into space because a launch vehicle failed. I've just been ready for a couple of years to image the whole world every day. This launch goes to Mission 1 and I'm on 5 this is a dove. It has one job to take pictures of the planet and send them back home . And this is home. The headquarters of Planet Hello. Hey Ashley how are you. Bad to see you. Welcome to planet. When I first met Wil Marshall he and his friends were building tiny satellites in their garage with a single interstellar dream. You know the Apollo pictures of the earth from the moon were seen as a bit of a phase change in human consciousness because suddenly people became more aware that we were sitting on this fragile planet. This next phase change is going from the earth as the static image that we think about to having it be its dynamic place that it really is. Every time we get done a new picture The Earth has changed the tree has gone down a river moved a field was harvested a vote serve has changed . How can we make decisions about the planet without having that information. It's been taking pictures from space for a few years but their dream hasn't come true yet to get their daily update. They need one last ride to launch the largest satellite constellation in human history. The first step is to stuff as many doves as they can into the nose cone of a rocket the rocket will take off and head toward low earth orbit once it arrives. The satellites are spit out into space . Over time the doves will use their solar panels like wings to glide in the thin atmosphere about 300 miles above the earth's surface and spread out in a room. It's almost like a string of pearls of these satellites that going around the Earth and the earth rotates underneath it. Then if you just look at it looking down it looks like a line scan so this has been our North Star for the company for the last five years and it's just about to happen. I think we're in the beginnings of thinking of new architectures in space and we're going to actually just see our Earth like expand a bit more that local space is gonna be something that feels not so unattainable to attain the unattainable planets reinvented the way satellites are made. Traditional satellites take years to build inside giant warehouses. Planet pops them out in a few days in a miniature factory in the middle of a city. To run it they hired a tech guru who used to build laptops and tablets traditional satellites are massive. Some of them are as big as a bus. People are building hundred million 20 minutes in a million dollar satellites. Most of the commercially out the box can be used for satellite. So that's what he started and he wanted to really focus on the performance by millimeter cube and be processed to millions far from it from nearly every day satellite. That's an area the size of Mexico for each tiny satellite and they have dozens upon dozens of them circling the Earth beaming down terabytes of data every day. And because they build them from smartphone stuff they're wildly cheaper than satellites used by Google or the CIA could take months or years to scan the planet that's made them the poster boys for something that's happening here in Silicon Valley and around the world. A new crop of companies that are chasing Elon Musk into orbit. They're supported by space nerds like Steve Jurgensen a venture capitalist who happens to own a space museum as well as early stakes in space x and planets. How would you describe New Space better than old space better than new Coke . It's like you know Apple versus IBM computing the New Wave . Companies are doing things differently more software a century and you build with whatever you can buy that you put into an iPhone used to buy off the shelf launch a super expensive and no one even knows what the price is and is mainly government smoky rooms that this gets negotiated with only governments weirdos and people who think governments you know launch rockets that pretty much describes space you know 20 years ago planet's co-founders came out of that world of weirdos. They were part of a new generation of free thinkers trained at NASA's Silicon Valley research center in the twilight of Reagan era efforts to shoot lasers and ballistic missiles into orbit. You guys were like space hippies. We were space hippies. While other people are looking to re weaponize space again you were trying to what. Well we were trying to campaign against that . We don't think it makes sense for nations to put weapons in space. It's sort of fundamentally conflicts with our vision for how space should be used to help humanity and that we shouldn't be taking our baggage of warfare into our next destination. The speedy updates have attracted Farmers Insurance companies do gooder nonprofits governments and inevitably more than a few spooks. They want to see how their neighbor's crops are doing check on damage from a flood count. Cars in parking lots are ships at ports and tracked the movements of terrorists. But if you TiVo the entire planet every day it's a drag to binge watch . Pretty pictures are nice for a lot of people but there are not enough developments in recent years. Machine learning has been tremendous and they've been particularly tremendous and where you one has deep stacks of imagery. Well that's exactly what we have. So you could train algorithms on this to extract information from that imagery in an automated way to answer people's more direct questions. So you guys start in space heavy as we think about this for just a second. There is kind of a surveillance aspect at this resolution at three to five meters. You can see a tree and a vehicle road but you can't see a person. It's not that there's zero ways in which this can do harm. Of course it's more about scanning the whole planet than it is about you know zooming in on something in particular. And that's that's important for me as far philosophical. Who people want to put all our satellites in orbit a lot and there's a lot more to come and like we're just beginning to see it in 2015 private investment into two private space companies exceeded all prior years. Times to take it the wrong way. But you've had to like launch vagabond launches the largest barrier to innovation in space. There's like 90 launches that happened a year mobile all the military's all the governments all the commercial companies around the world. We've kind of hacked it to get into space. And over the last four years we've been on the launch pad 15 times. American companies Space X liftoff of the Orbital Sciences and Taylor Riggs rocket at Terry's is on its way lift off. We've been on you always rocket on the shoulders of Catholics. We've been on a Japanese rocket. Yes we've been on two different types of Russian rockets and now going up again for the second time on an indie . Well in that case there's only one thing to do . If you're sending rockets up it helps to be in the middle of nowhere in case something goes wrong out here. You've gotten nothing but salt flats. Once we get to the end of the road it's going to be a jungle and machines . India's space port is on a small island off the southeast coast of the country in the middle of a bird sanctuary surrounded by not much else other than farms and fishermen. So around here rockets are pretty much the biggest show in town . The Indian Space Research Organization is all said to create a new world record by hook and Oka. What I guess I didn't know Daniel Puckett had a bump in the water here in Russia and the previous record by launching 37 satellites in 2000 and 14. It's quite a sizable jump from that Russian number so what if ise turns on to protect Americans from the government's of. Some people shot a real good dinner not seem appear to be doing in combat and told us about the lovely dinner . Historically a lot of focus on the space programs in India . Every person graduating in any Paul Sweeney cities in this country they aspect to go far. Indian space of late this rose carved out a niche as a reliable ride to space at a bargain . It's because they get their pick of ambitious brainy and cheap engineers who want their shot at space just like coasting planets head of tech. When I was in high school they were following other countries and now in the last 15 years they have come a long way . With each land we have some excess capacity available. And this excess capacity is being effectively replaced by this month's Adelaide manufacturers. One company wants to have a dynamic satellite constellation another 400. And without even putting off thousand four hundred satellite constellations we are trying to maximise electric dance by taking in many of these months actually. Hey how is your prize for commercial Rogers compared to space. If somebody is seeking you probably more of a cost competition than others . This veritable workforce of Israel has now made seven continuous successful flights including important missions like that. And among them the rocket. This time will launch 104 satellites which multiple satellites in multiple orbits 88 nano satellites each weighing approximately 5 kilograms called dumb satellites belongs to a U.S. company . We've undertaken a mine Apollo project in this lab here in San Francisco. And today we're on the verge of achieving it . It wasn't just for shits and giggles that we decided to get this daily mission. You know it wasn't just because we wanted to break that record and have the largest number of satellites all the world's major challenges from feeding everyone and world poverty to stopping climate change and all the rest. Having daily images of the planet. It was going to dramatically and substantively help those global challenges . There's a small but finite chance of this thing blowing up what does it feel like when the launch blows up our coverage . No unfortunately. I know that feeling quite underneath. Two times we've put our dogs on the rocket and they didn't make it in the service price controls. So that was Taylor Riggs but we lost 26 satellites and on the Space X that was going to the space station we have eight satellites as well Scott good morning and greetings to all of our viewers. I welcome you to this launch your regular can be good but we don't get a good value. We need this third time. A lot of momentum go or I shot her 6 5 0 1 0 0 0. That's what perfectly proper make sure that he big nugget . Nasdaq Michael McKee in the satellite business it's not enough for the rocket to get the space the planet needs it's 88 doves in orbit. That takes 17 agonizing minutes as the rocket accelerates to 21 times the speed of sound toward Antarctica and past the reach of any tracking station built by when it reappears the dumps will or won't be flying here . I'm determined and I think many other people are determined as well to realize our commercial space economy get separated. You will have the space economy integrating with the trustful economy in a way like it never did before. When that happens which is like within our lifetime it'll be one of the watershed moments of humanity. This is up there like the discovery fire or evolution is greatest hits. It's just not a. So the orbit has been achieved about six minutes. There will be no signal from the vehicle get this thing working. The movement will continue to build around a transparent Nasdaq. Max not likely not so great submissions have started . Pick the phenomenon that you want to track this new data set that we have. It's survival comes to us from both clouds. Up on we're not for satellites. I can't. No. The mission has been accomplished. This planet now operates the largest satellite fleet in history. There's no way that anyone could scan that planet on a daily basis like we can now. No one can .

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The All-Seeing Eye in the Sky

Silicon Valley based startup Planet has one goal: to take a picture of the entire planet every day. To do that, they need to launch the largest number of satellites in human history. In this episode of Ventures, Bloomberg Businessweek's Ashlee Vance journeys to India to watch Planet's satellites hitch a ride on a rocket. (video by Grant Slater, Victoria Blackburne-Daniell, David Nicholson) (Source: Bloomberg)

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