At the GeoIgnite conference in Ottawa, Wade Larsen of Urthecast described what may be a killer application for satellite imagery captured daily. Farmers in the US over-irrigate by 25% per year. A recent study has demonstrated that monitoring vegetation growth on a daily basis can save farmers $50 000 in water per year. With 260,000 pivots operating in the US, this amounts to billions of dollars of savings every year.

Urthecast has been known for having two cameras (Iris and Theia) on the International Space Station and two Deimos earth observation satellites. Last year Urthecast announced the acquisition of Geosys Technology, a software company that processes earth observation imagery for agricultural applications.  Their latest initiative is called UrtheDaily with the objective of capturing nine bands of imagery from six satellites covering the Earth’s entire landmass every day. The nine bands are identical to Sentinel-2’s visual and near-infrared bands. The cameras are cross-calibrated with Sentinel-2 to assure data compatibility. The six cameras enable a daily revisit for higher latitudes and somewhat less for tropical areas. It captures imagery at the same time, from the same altitude every day.  About 150 terabytes will be acquired and downloaded every day. The imagery has five meter resolution (GSD) and represents scientific grade data quality that will be available on the cloud for user access within hours of acquisition. UrtheDaily is designed to support machine-learning and AI ready geo-analytics applications on a global scale. The UrtheDaily platform will provide the ability to discover data, run user algorithms, and deliver data to customers.

UrtheCast reports that it has already signed contracts primarily in the agriculture sector. An example of a potential killer app in agriculture is monitoring irrigation. Farmers in the U.S. overwater by 25 %. A four year in Texas by HydroBio which assessed the value of frequent monitoring of plant health and growth using satellite data concluded that to be effective this required high-frequency (daily) monitoring with highly calibrated sensors. With its resolution UrtheDaily will be able to monitor vegetation for individual pivots on a daily basis in order to optimize water utilization. It is estimated that this could save farmers $50,000 per pivot per year. (A pivot typically irrigates 120 acres.) There are 260,000 pivot irrigation systems in the U.S. which translates into the potential to save farmers billions of dollars per year.

To date UrtheCast reports that it has signed $350 million worth of contracts in the U.S., Russia, India and other countries. It plans to launch six satellites in 2021 and become operational in 2022.