{"id":19148,"date":"2016-12-08T00:54:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T16:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/planet-opens-office-in-seattle-area-to-work-on-data-platform-for-satellite-imagery\/"},"modified":"2016-12-08T00:54:59","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T16:54:59","slug":"planet-opens-office-in-seattle-area-to-work-on-data-platform-for-satellite-imagery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/planet-opens-office-in-seattle-area-to-work-on-data-platform-for-satellite-imagery\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet opens office in Seattle area to work on data platform for satellite imagery"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_294791\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-294791\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-294791\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161215-planet3-630x452.jpg\" alt=\"Karthik Govindhasamy\" width=\"630\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161215-planet3-630x452.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161215-planet3-768x551.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161215-planet3-1240x890.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161215-planet3.jpg 2035w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-294791\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karthik Govindhasamy, Planet\u2019s chief technology officer and executive vice president of engineering, shows off a mural that depicts Dove satellites being deployed from the International Space Station. The mural graces the reception area of Planet\u2019s Bellevue office. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>BELLEVUE, Wash. \u2013 Planet has landed \u2026 in the Seattle area.<\/p>\n<p>The upstart satellite imaging company formerly&nbsp;known as Planet Labs has moved into&nbsp;a 3,000-square-foot office in Bellevue\u2019s Northup North Office Park, and plans to&nbsp;have 10 software engineers working there by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-294792 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Planet-Logo.png\" alt=\"planet-logo\" width=\"240\" height=\"117\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Planet-Logo.png 240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Planet-Logo-200x98.png 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Planet-Logo-150x73.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\"><\/p>\n<p>Two engineers were hired for the office as of this week, when GeekWire paid a visit. That\u2019s not counting Karthik Govindhasamy, a former Microsoft and Nokia engineer who is now Planet\u2019s chief technology officer and executive vice president of engineering.<\/p>\n<p>Govindhasamy is in charge of the Bellevue office, and he\u2019s happy to be part of the Seattle area\u2019s growing space community.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to be close to the ecosystem,\u201d Govindhasamy said. \u201cSpaceX is nearby. Microsoft is in the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Planet\u2019s headquarters is in San Francisco, but it also has offices in Germany, Canada and the Netherlands. The six-year-old startup\u2019s current workforce amounts to more than 360 employees. Its total equity funding is nearing the $200 million mark.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Planet at a Glance\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UL1aAwGW7VQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In less than three years, Planet has had more than 140 of its Dove nanosatellites sent into orbit, and 60 of those are currently operational, Govindhasamy said. The Doves are typically deployed either from India\u2019s PSLV launch vehicle or from the International Space Station\u2019s CubeSat launcher.<\/p>\n<p>The work being done at the Bellevue office focuses on what happens next.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur platform is unprecedented,\u201d Govindhasamy said. \u201cWe are collecting an average of 50 million square kilometers [of Earth imagery] a day, and publishing more than 20 million square kilometers a day. That\u2019s about one-third of the entire land mass, and our goal is to get the entire land mass every day. That\u2019s a huge amount of data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such imagery can be a precious resource for tracking crop production and other economic activities, monitoring urban development and environmental changes, or responding to disasters.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_294781\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-294781\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-294781\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161206-planet-dapl-630x374.jpg\" alt=\"DAPL imagery\" width=\"630\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161206-planet-dapl-630x374.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/161206-planet-dapl.jpg 646w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-294781\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Planet Dove satellite image shows the area around the Dakota Access Pipeline protest as of Nov. 16. Click on the picture to learn more about the time-lapse satellite imagery. (\u00a92016 Planet Labs, CC-BY-SA 4.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But processing and distributing all that imagery requires a robust data platform&nbsp;\u2013 and building out that platform requires software engineers who know their way around cloud computing, service-oriented&nbsp;architecture and data analytics.<\/p>\n<p>Those are just the kinds of folks that the Seattle area is known for.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to start out with software development here, but I can see the future opportunities for different areas,\u201d Govindhasamy said.<\/p>\n<p>Seattle and its environs already have their share of satellite data operations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SpaceX set up its office in Redmond to work on what\u2019s expected to become a 4,425-satellite network for global internet services.<\/li>\n<li>Planetary Resources set up shop in the same neighborhood&nbsp;to work on its Ceres constellation of Earth-observing satellites, with an eye toward transitioning into asteroid mining.<\/li>\n<li>Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries and its BlackSky subsidiary are getting started on their own constellation for near-real-time satellite imagery. (Spaceflight also arranged for the launch of 12 Planet Dove satellites in June)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To get&nbsp;the talent they\u2019re looking for, Govindhasamy and his teammates will have to compete with those ventures&nbsp;\u2013 plus other Seattle aerospace companies such as Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Blue Origin,&nbsp;Tethers Unlimited and Vulcan Aerospace, plus the usual suspects at Amazon and Microsoft.<\/p>\n<p>Govindhasamy can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike I said, we are happy to join the ecosystem and use the talent pool,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are great universities here, great tech companies, great space companies. \u2026 We believe this is going to be a unique situation for candidates who\u2019d like to pursue this challenging technology that we are building.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karthik Govindhasamy, Planet\u2019s chief technology officer and executive vice president of engineering, shows off a mural that depicts Dove satellites being deployed from the International Space Station. The mural graces the reception area of Planet\u2019s Bellevue office. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) BELLEVUE, Wash. \u2013 Planet has landed \u2026 in the Seattle area. The upstart [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,416,20],"class_list":["post-19148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-planet-labs","tag-satellite"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}