SAN FRANCISCO — In recent months, satellite photos have streamed into a former textile factory here revealing a build-up of potent Russian air defense systems in Ukraine, a serious new threat to NATO aircraft. This is not a secret CIA facility, and the images didn’t come from a billion-dollar surveillance satellite. They were taken by private spacecraft — some the size of a loaf of bread — operated by Planet Labs, a Silicon Valley company that is leading a revolution in how humans glimpse Earth from space.A short stroll from the downtown San Francisco headquarters of Yelp and LinkedIn, Planet operates the largest and least expensive fleet of satellites in history — the first to take pictures of the entire landmass of the globe, once a day, and sell them to the public. The company is part of a fast-growing commercial satellite industry that is democratizing insights once available mainly to people with Top Secret government security clearances.In May, one of Planet’s satellites captured a white plume of smoke from an illegal North Korean missile test, an image that rocketed through the next day’s news cycle, undercutting President Donald Trump’s insistence that the North Korean regime is negotiating with the U.S. in good faith.
Tiny, Privately Owned Satellites Are Changing How We View The Earth
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