“What’s stopping someone else from launching satellites and cameras, competing with you and taking your market?” This is a question nearly every investor asks. At first glance, it seems easy to enter this field—simply buy a hyperspectral imager, add a satellite bus, and launch. The reality is far more complex. The past 15 years have seen numerous earth observation companies promising to revolutionize the industry shut down before reaching space, launching satellites that failed, or reaching orbit, but producing unusable data. They failed because doing earth observation is hard. The challenges in this industry are numerous: fundraising, managing sensitive optics, surviving the launch, ensuring hardware and software function correctly from the start, and the long wait before you get to ship a product and iterate on the business model. Etc. One of the most significant hurdles? Producing a well-calibrated image product that customers are willing to purchase. Uncalibrated imagery is nearly worthless. At Wyvern, we dedicate substantial time to calibrating our satellites and ensuring high-quality imagery. Our satellites undergo repeated calibration over time, comparing data against other satellites (both Wyvern's and government) and established government or military calibration sites. Delivering quality imagery that customers value is one of the most challenging aspects of launching an Earth Observation satellite. Putting a camera on a satellite bus doesn't make everything magically work. #hyperspectral #remotesensing
I couldn't agree more. One of the frustrating things that has held back earth observation is that it is relatively easy to generating startling images that seem to be full of useful information and very much more difficult to translate the results into useful geophysical data that has value for earth based applications.
Christopher, for Canadian startups to become big players I believe that collaboration is critical for success. At least in the early stages. Is your company getting involved with the problems the NOAA is experiencing? This is a great opportunity for Canada to step up and possibly become the dominant provider of weather imaging and data management.
Miklos Tomka
1w
Interesting article. I wonder how processing data in orbit will impact the industry? Less wasted cost downloading data, faster insights driving more revenues are key to profits and so to happy investors...
The calibrated images products definitely add an extra layer of complexity. In my professional experience, the spacecraft bus and optical payload are still major barriers for entry. The first 10 times my teams successfully operated in LEO were tough. The next 25+ times were much easier. The companies that can deliver these and the technical personnel who can integrate them are few and far in between. Without someone on the team having previous experience getting into orbit regularly, the unknown unknowns will inevitably lead to oversight and often failure (SpaceRyde is a prime example). But once that’s stabilized, switching context from hardware to “how do I scale by offering data in a way/format that customers” want is the next big barrier to competitors. Glad to see some people have figured that out ;)
So True! Speaking of calibration, does Wyvern have a whitepaper on any of this?
Iskander B.
1w
Totally agree with you. Satellite data without any radiometric and geometric rigorous calibration and validation are useless. That's why at VITO Remote Sensing, we developed CalibrEO, an advanced SmallSat In-flight calibration solution https://remotesensing.vito.be/services/calibreo
Shanti Rao
1w
I laughed out loud. Expertise is a moat!
Pranit Mehta
1w
Absolutely true! Like Suyash Singh keeps saying, a satellite being launched is the KRA of a launch provider. Producing high quality images is the KRA of the data provider.
Let us know if you need any cooperation in downlinking, calibrating and validating sat images.
NewSpace Headhunter | First Principles Hiring | Making Space Fun Again | UK NPoC for the SGAC
1wWell said. The number of EO operators claiming X satellites flying when only a small fraction actually work and deliver high-quality imagery is crazy. And I've never understood the competitor question. In this case, the technical complexity and capital required are large, but there will always be competitors. What it comes down to is who can best execute on their ideas, not who has the best ideas.