Nicole Robinson

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Earth Observation in a New Normal World

BY NICOLE ROBINSON

President, Ursa Space Systems

The COVID pandemic has significantly impacted our daily lives. The satellite industry, for example, has witnessed an enormous growth in appetite for Cloudbased, digital insights into the changes in our world.

One of the most used phrases throughout the pandemic has been the description of things as the ‘new normal’, an acknowledgement of the impact COVID has had on a whole host of daily dynamics. Take the global supply chain crisis. Most people never gave much thought to supply chains and how they worked. Now, logistics are top of mind around the world. Customers want to know how the Earth Observation (EO) industry can shed light on supply chains so they can better understand the new patterns that have emerged — the movement of goods around the world and where congestion is worsening or improving. This is an opportunity for the EO community to analyze new and emerging economic patterns.

A game changer for EO The proliferation of small satellites in orbit has been a game changer, creating new opportunities for downstream applications. With this, the need for speed and access to critical insights has become quite prevalent.

Gone are the days where an EO result turnaround of three to four days would meet a customer’s needs. For a first responder or special forces operator, the funding to study and apply here, but when we consider what commercial value and tertiary impacts ice melting can have, it changes the dynamic and opens the marketable opportunity.

Hurdles in the way As dynamic as the New Space industry is, the community is limited by the methods of access, standardization and practical applications in daily life. Today, many of these capabilities require long term commitments, steep minimum consumption rates, and foreign formats in order to access and leverage the services.

One of our missions at Ursa has been to standardize the formats across all our satellite intelligence providers, solidify the licensing terms, and give access to the insights EO can deliver right from our website. It’s with this ease of use and access that we can truly leverage the full global market reach and potential this exceptional industry has to offer.

difference between a couple of hours and a couple of days can be a matter of life and death.

Another trend is the fusion of different sensors into a single deliverable to meet complex problems. When you start to mix-andmatch different sensors, the outcome can be more robust and go further in painting a complete picture of the ground situation.

EO to mitigate climate challenges EO has served an important role in monitoring climate change for many years. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), for example, is ideal for monitoring sea ice melting, deforestation, flooding, wildfires, agriculture, snow cover et al. The beauty of SAR in the climate monitoring Space is its ability to see through cloud coverage, smoke and at any time day or night.

The EO industry is positioned to contribute in a meaningful way because at its core, there is a strong geospatial element to this issue that we can tackle head on. A good example is sea ice melting. Perhaps there isn’t a huge market of government

As dynamic as the New Space industry is, the community is limited by the methods of access, standardization and practical applications in daily life.