BlackSky’s high-resolution small satellite constellation has the highest revisit rate in the world, with a peak of 15 hourly visits per day over certain locations. The real-time geospatial intelligence company achieved a 12 small satellite constellation, doubling its imaging capacity, following Wednesday’s successful Rocket Lab mission.
In less than 30 days the company launched six satellites on three different missions using two launch providers across two continents. Following each respective mission, the satellites achieved first light within hours after launch and were successfully commissioned into operations within 48 hours.
“This is an incredible achievement for BlackSky and the industry. Our ability to rapidly launch, deploy, and commission on-orbit capacity provides customers with confidence that they will have access to the insights they need to support critical operations,” said Brian E. O’Toole, BlackSky CEO. “At a time when many suppliers are facing the challenges of an aging constellation, BlackSky is bringing significant capacity into the market.”
The recently commissioned satellites provided imagery that was processed through the company’s Spectra AI platform, delivering AI-enabled insights to customers within hours.
BlackSky’s Spectra AI platform serves as a tasking and analytics engine that fuses multiple data sources of information with its geospatial imagery from the company’s proprietary constellation. Through a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Spectra AI delivers real-time geospatial intelligence products to customers with no humans in the loop.
Completing the 12-satellite constellation follows a year of high-paced execution that included raising $283 million during its IPO in September, a multi-year investment partnership with Palantir, and capturing several US Government contracts.
“With our baseline constellation in place supplying images to a fully operational, AI-enabled SaaS platform we are now ready to scale up services to meet strong commercial and government market demand,” said O’Toole. “We are now entering a new era of commercial space and BlackSky is at the forefront of changing the way we see and understand our world.”
