Today, I am speaking with Chiara Solimini, Space Downstream Market Officer at EUSPA, the agency that manages the space programme of the European Union. In this episode, we discuss what EUSPA is and its activities, the role of EUSPA in promoting the use of data from the Copernicus programme, the European Green Deal and how Copernicus enables its imp…

Today, I am speaking with Rhiannan Price, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at DevGlobal. DevGlobal is a consultancy that works in the development sector on impact projects with the world’s leading non-profits, companies, philanthropies, multilateral agencies, and government agencies. Rhiannan has been working in Earth observation for a while, es…

Today, I am speaking with Thijs van Leeuwen, Director of Product at Planet. Most of you should be aware of Planet, the company that operates the largest fleet of earth imaging satellites. A couple of years ago, Planet acquired VanderSat, a Dutch startup offering data products like soil moisture derived from various sources of satellite data. Today,…

Today, we are zooming out from Earth observation a little bit and going to focus on a subject that I think is very important for the future of EO: space sustainability. We are launching more Earth observation satellites than ever before, and the progress in space tech has meant that any individual, organisation or country can put up an instrument i…

Today, I am speaking with Dr Claire Burke, who is the Director of Science at Climate X, a UK-based startup that is building a global climate risk analytics platform to support organisations in their climate adaptation efforts. In this episode, we talk about what Climate X does, their tech stack and how they use satellite data, how they convert scie…

Today, I have two guests from Asterra, the Israeli startup offering a satellite-based solution for monitoring all kinds of infrastructure, whether it is for monitoring roads, rails, dams, water utilities and even for mining. While Asterra uses analytics derived from synthetic aperture radar (or SAR) imagery in their products, they use a specific ty…

Today, I am excited to bring you an episode on a topic that I have been researching for a while - satellite imagery in 3D. The guest I am speaking with is Josh Winer who is a Senior Director for Global Sales at Maxar Technologies. Maxar probably needs no introduction as a company, I think most of you know what Maxar does both within the Earth obser…

Today, I have two guests: Dan Pilone, co-founder of Element84 and Robert Cheetham, founder of Azavea, which Element84 recently acquired. Both Element84 and Azavea are essentially service companies that focus on building solutions to solve important problems in the realm of processing, visualization, and analysis of geospatial data, with open-source…

Today, I am speaking with Pooja Mahapatra, who is the Global Lead of Geospatial for Climate at Fugro, a Netherlands-based company focused on geotechnical and surveying services for monitoring infrastructure. As you will hear from Pooja, geospatial data is central to Fugro's strategy and one of the fundamental technologies that power their products …

Today, I am speaking with Dr Benjamin Laken, who is the Chief Science Officer at Cervest, a UK-based startup building a climate intelligence platform to support climate adaptation efforts for enterprises, governments and non-profits. Climate risk is an important topic and satellite data has a lot to offer for estimating it. Whether it is the climat…

Today, I am speaking with Grega Milčinski, CEO of Sinergise, a geospatial IT company based in Slovenia. Sinergise is most well-known for their flagship product, Sentinel Hub, which is a platform for accessing, processing and analysing Earth observation data. Grega has been around in the EO sector for a while now and has a ton of insight into the mo…

Today, I am speaking with Professor Paul Bates, Chairman and Co-founder of Fathom, a UK-based startup specialising in water risk intelligence. We have already had one episode on floods recently with Floodbase, a company that is working on creating near real-time flood maps, but in this episode with Paul, we discuss how flood risk is measured and mo…

Today, I am speaking with Sean Mitchell, Chairman & Chief Commercial Officer at Ubotica, an AI-driven edge computing startup from Ireland. Edge computing is a technology that has started to create a lot of buzz in the Earth observation sector. Enabling some processing of satellite data on-board the satellite before downlinking seems efficient, but …

Today, I am speaking with Brad Bode, CTO & CIO at ATLAS Space Operations, which is a ground software as a service company. Ground segment is an area of the space industry which really doesn't get a lot attention, despite the fact that it is the bridge between data acquired in space and data collected on Earth. So, I had Brad on the podcast to discu…

Today, I have two guests Bessie Schwarz, co-founder & CEO and Subit Chakrabarti, VP of Technology at Floodbase. Floodbase, which used to be called Cloud to Street, before their rebrand recently, is a climate-tech startup using satellite imagery to build flood data products for use by the insurance sector. In this episode, Bessie, Subit and I discus…

Today, I am sharing an insightful discussion I had with Elly Perets, CEO of Asterra. Asterra is a startup headquartered in Israel, that offers a platform for monitoring all kinds of infrastructure, whether it is for monitoring roads, rails, dams, water utilities or even for mining - based on synthetic aperture radar (or SAR) data. SAR, as some of y…

We have got an interesting episode today, I know I say that for most episodes, but this one is actually quite interesting because we are talking about a strategy that not many companies have pursued in Earth observation - starting as a product company and offering solutions based on EO data, then deciding to go up the value chain and launch proprie…

This week, I am sharing an episode from the New Space India podcast where I was invited to talk about all things Earth observation, particularly focusing on India. The New Space India podcast is hosted by Narayan Prasad, the co-founder and COO of satsearch and is the go-to podcast to learn about space tech in India. I thought I will share this epis…

Jed is the Executive Director of the Radiant Earth Foundation and used be the Open Data Lead at Amazon Web Services. Jed is an influential thinker in the Earth observation space and he has been part of a number of important milestones in this sector. I wanted to have Jed on the podcast to talk about his thoughts on the future of Earth observation, …

Today I am speaking with with Bill Perkins, Founder of SkyFi and Luke Fischer, CEO of SkyFi. SkyFi, which just recently went live with their product, aims to democratise satellite imagery and make it affordable, accessible and usable for everyone. I recommend checking out their app, which looks pretty cool. In this episode, we talk about the foundi…

Happy new year, everyone. Hope you are having a great start to the year. Back to podcasting after the much-needed break! Today, I am speaking with Dr. Argyro Kavvada, who is the program manager at NASA’s Earth Sciences Division for their Sustainable Development Goals initiative, essentially focusing on how to translate Earth observation for sustain…

Today, I am speaking with Mila Luleva from Rabobank, a multinational banking and financial services company, where Mila heads the remote sensing team. You might wonder what a bank is doing with Earth observation data and how they are going about integrating this technology into their processes. That's exactly why I wanted to have Mila on the podcas…

Today, I am speaking with Awais Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Pixxel, a space tech startup founded in India, with offices in the US, that is launching a constellation of Earth observation satellites collecting hyperspectral imagery. I have tracked Pixxel with two lenses over the years - one with my consultant hat analysing how this new startup will …

In this episode, I am speaking with Sean Wiid, CEO of UP42, an Earth observation company providing simplified access to geospatial data and processing. UP42 has had quite an interesting journey over the years. I would put in the category of platforms in the rapidly growing EO market, providing access to multiple sources of geospatial data from diff…

In this episode, I am speaking with Arnaud Guérin from Preligens, startup based in France that is building software for the defence & intelligence sector, by applying artificial intelligence to satellite imagery, among other data sources. Preligens was in the news recently as they won a 7-year long, 240M EUR contract from the Ministere des Armees, …

In this episode, I am speaking with Arjen Vrielink from Satelligence. Satelligence is a startup based in the Netherlands that is building solutions to monitor deforestation, track supply chains and carbon stocks using Earth observation data. Arjen has been a twitter friend for a while and I really like his pragmatic takes on the future of the indus…

Welcome to episode #50. This is a special one and it is been in the making for a while! Today, I am speaking with Simonetta Cheli, the Director of Earth Observation Programmes at the European Space Agency (or ESA). November is an important month for ESA as the Ministerial Council is coming up shortly, scheduled on the 22nd and 23rd of November 2022…

In this episode, I speak with Paul Counet, Head of Strategy and International Relations at EUMETSAT. EUMETSAT (or) The European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites is an intergovernmental organisation with 30 Member States in Europe, with an objective to establish, maintain and exploit European systems of operational mete…

Today, I have two guests on the podcast - Pierrick Poulenas, co-founder and CEO of Picterra along with Pascal van Dalen, the Chief Growth Officer. Picterra is an Earth observation startup based in Switzerland, providing a platform to train, deploy, and manage geospatial models at scale. Picterra sits at what I call the "Distribution" layer of Earth…

Today, I am speaking with James Slifierz, from SkyWatch. For those who don't know, SkyWatch is a Canadian startup that aims to remove the barriers to accessing commercial satellite imagery, through two offerings - one called EarthCache that is a one-stop shop to acquire commercial satellite data and the other called TerraStream that provides an ide…

Today, I am speaking with Nadine Alameh, the CEO of Open Geospatial Consortium, an international organisation dedicated to making geospatial data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) through consensus-based standards, collaborative innovation projects, and industry partnerships. I wanted to have Nadine on the podcast to speak abo…

Today, I am speaking with Yana Gevorgyan, the Secretariat Director of the Group on Earth Observations (or GEO). GEO is a unique global network connecting government institutions, academic and research institutions, data providers, businesses, engineers, scientists and experts to create innovative solutions based on Earth observation. I wanted to ha…

Today, I am speaking with Abe Tarapani, CEO of Atlas AI. I wanted to feature Atlas AI as “Startup of the Month” on the podcast as I believe they are doing something very important and impactful with satellite data. I will let you listen to Abe explaining what Atlas AI does, but to give you an idea, they are attempting to fill the gaps in socioecono…

Today, I am speaking with Jonny Dyer, co-founder and CEO of Muon Space. Muon Space is a recently-founded startup based in California that is developing an Earth observation satellite platform that would bring remote sensing capability to organisations that lack the expertise needed to develop it themselves. Jonny Dyer is well-known in the Earth obs…

Today, I am speaking with Prof. Chris Rapley from University College London. From working on Earth observations missions to study the polar regions with radar altimetry instruments to actually researching there as the director of British Antarctic Survey, Prof Chris Rapley is an accomplished scientist. He was also the Director of the Science Museum…

Today, I am speaking with Daniel Wicks, head of geospatial intelligence at Satellite Applications Catapult in the UK. Satellite Applications Catapult is an entity set up by the UK, and is one of nine Catapults, aimed at building innovation and driving economic growth. I was interested to speak with Dan because I believe the organisation is doing im…

Housekeeping: This is the first episode after the break, after officially launching my business TerraWatch Space. As I mentioned in the blog post, I am going to be changing the format of the podcast a little. The "Startup of the Month" is where I will have an interesting startup in Earth observation on the podcast to give them a platform for highli…

Looking back at the journey of TerraWatch Space podcast and its future - some gratitude, some learnings & some thoughts on how I want to see the podcast grow, as I go full-time on TerraWatch Space with the goal of making satellite data mainstream. Usual episodes should start on Wednesday. Thank you! -Aravind…

Today, I am speaking with Thomas Ormston, Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager for the Sentinel-1 mission at the European Space Agency. Thomas has over 15 years of experience in spacecraft operations from being part of the operations team for the Mars Express mission to then becoming the spacecraft operations engineer for EarthCARE and Sentinel-1 m…

Today, I am speaking with Julia Wagemann, an independent consultant and project manager in the Earth observation sector. Julia works in the intersection of data providers and users aiming to make large volumes of EO data better accessible and used. She has several years of experience in EO and she has worked with organisations including ESA, EUMETS…

Today I am speaking with Dr. Marshall Shepherd, an American meteorologist, professor at the University of Georgia and the director of the university's atmospheric sciences program. Dr.Shepherd was the 2013 president of the American Meteorological Society and a past chair of the NASA Earth Sciences Advisory Committee.Dr. Shepherd is also the host of…

Today, I am speaking with John Murtagh from Airbus Intelligence. I don't think the company requires an introduction - Airbus Intelligence has been delivering value from satellite imagery for over 30 years. John Murtagh is the Head of Strategy for the Intelligence program unit of Airbus Defence and Space. Since joining Airbus in 1992, John has under…

Today I am speaking with Jonathan Lacoste, General Partner at SpaceVC, a venture capital firm investing in space companies. I was keen on getting Jonathan on the podcast because he has quite an interesting story. In 2011, he co-founded Jebbit, an enterprise software company, built it and scaled it into a multi-million dollar businesses. Following t…

Today, I am speaking with David Henri, co-founder and chief product officer of Exotrail. Exotrail is a French NewSpace startup that is focusing on space mobility meaning, enabling small satellites to move in space, optimising their deployment, and increasing their performance. In this episode, David and I talk about what is going on in the French N…

Today, I am speaking with Max Gulde, co-founder and CEO of ConstellR, Cassi Welling, COO of ConstellR and Guerric de Crombrugghe, Chief Product Officer of ConstellR and former CEO of ScanWorld. ConstellR is an Earth observation startup, focusing on collecting thermal infrared data from space for agriculture. I find them interesting because, even th…

Today, I am speaking with Prateep Basu, co-founder and CEO of SatSure, an Earth observation company from India, that just closed a $5M pre-series A round earlier this year. In this episode, Prateep and I discuss the state of Indian space ecosystem, being a space tech entrepreneur in India, SatSure's plans and the Earth observation market. ----- 01:…

This episode has been in the making for a while, as I was really interested in understanding the Earth observation market in China. So, it was great to have Blaine and Tianyi, two experts on the space industry in China, on the podcast to discuss this subject. Blaine Curcio is the founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, a Senior Affliate Consultant a…

Today I am speaking with Alex Greenberg, Co-founder & COO of Loft Orbital. Loft is actually one of my favourite companies in the space industry. I will let you listen to Alex explaining about what they do, but what got me interested in Loft is - they are actually trying to solve something that I have been asking myself over the last couple of years…

In this episode, I am speaking with Emiliano Kargieman aka EK. EK is the founder and CEO of Satellogic, an Earth observation company founded in 2010 that just trading in the public market, about a month ago. EK and I discuss the founding story of Satellogic, the early challenges and learnings, the state of the Earth observation market, Satellogic's…

We are going to discuss something that is usually not discussed as much in the space industry. And that's the topic of cybersecurity. As we continue to launch more and more commercial satellites, I guess it is not a question of if we will see the first big satellite hack, but when. To explore this subject further, I invited Mathieu Bailly, VP of Sp…