US satellite imagery start-up OmniEarth is close to securing US$10m in its first funding round as it looks to start building 18 spacecraft in the next few months. Boosted by the expertise and strategic investments of its established industrial partners,…
US satellite imagery start-up OmniEarth is close to securing US$10m in its first funding round as it looks to start building 18 spacecraft in the next few months.
Boosted by the expertise and strategic investments of its established industrial partners, the group hopes to launch its first bird in early 2016 so it can join a gold rush of space companies looking to tap soaring demand for ‘big data’.
Nonprofit research firm Draper Laboratory is providing overall systems engineering for the US$250m constellation, which will be built by mid-tier manufacturer Dynetics. Harris’ space solutions business has also partnered with the group and has been tasked with selling hosted payload space.
OmniEarth aims to leverage on rideshare opportunities for a speedy launch programme that will see it place five satellites in Q4 2016, after lofting a test bird in Q1/Q2 of that year. The remaining 12 will be launched on a mix of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and rideshares so that the entire constellation is fully operational by Q1 2018.
In the meantime, the group is looking to grow a customer base for the analytical services it has been developing over the last two years, using existing public data from satellites already in orbit.
Its chief financial officer Carter Old, who is also COO of merchant bank Fieldstone Partners, an OmniEarth financial backer and long time adviser to MSS operator Iridium, said that through this work it has already been able to prove the venture’s business case and validate the market on commercial revenues alone.
“Unlike other satellite companies that rely on a constellation of satellites to generate their first revenues, we are in the process now of building out products for customers over the next several months,” he told SatelliteFinance in an interview.
“We started having our first revenues come in earlier this month.”
OmniEarth’s other backer is business incubator InSpace, whose co-founder Lars Dyrud is the start-up’s CEO.
Dyrud, who also leads Draper’s Earth and Space Sciences Laboratory, said another factor that sets it apart from other imagery start-ups like Skybox Imaging and Planet Labs is its focus on physically verifiable information, rather than human generated data.
“We’ve been focusing on creating a system that collects Earth observation data that has significant business value everywhere once per day and have not been focused on trying to build a cheaper picture-taking satellite,” he said in the same interview.
“That’s a key differentiator in what we’ve been trying to do. And I think really puts us largely in a non-compete situation with both existing and newcomers that are coming online.”
While Planet Labs aims to launch 100 cubesats to cover most of the Earth’s surface, it will not have OmniEarth’s scientific-grade multispectral capability. Meanwhile Skybox aims to give access to high resolution images and video in areas of interest to its mainstream consumers, whereas OmniEarth sees its niche in the global agriculture, energy, natural resources, mobile services and government communities.
By pushing out its analytical products early, geared particularly towards mobile applications, OmniEarth hopes to already have a large customer base in place by the time its own satellites are up. Even when that constellation is online, however, the group plans to still be “data agnostic” and use services from other operators.
In addition to big data, OmniEarth plans to tap demand for hosted payloads to take advantage of another growing market in space.
Each satellite will have around 80kg of payload space, which Harris will integrate through its AppStar platform. The Florida-based group is also looking for partners for 81 hosted payloads on the upcoming Iridium NEXT satellite constellation.
“It’s about creating a vibrant commercial ecosystem,” said Dyrud.
“It’s an additional revenue stream that helps make us a more attractive investment.”
