Waterloo-based Skywatch is aiming to be a one-stop shop for Earth observation data. On a path in trying to achieve that goal, they’ve announced a new product, EarthCache-X.
EarthCache-X aims to provide “a new means for remote sensing partners to go to market with flexible ways to handle data in custom formats that customers might require,” and to “deliver emerging data types to the commercial Earth observation (EO) market.”
Skywatch, leveraging their team’s “past experience in space data aggregation software,” has been developing two existing platforms focused on easing interfaces between satellite data providers and their customers: EarthCache and TerraStream.
EarthCache, released in 2018, was the first API for commercial satellite data. It allows customers’ systems and software to easily access a wide variety of satellite imagery from a number of different providers, and to integrate that imagery into their own software. The system gets requests from users’ systems (or through a user using the EarthCache console) for imagery, forwards the request, and either serves up archival imagery or tasks an appropriate satellite or constellation with getting it. It then processes and refines the imagery and passes it back to the customer’s system.
TerraStream, in turn, is an integrated data management solution for satellite operators that leverages a payload that can be integrated into their satellites. It passes requests for imagery to satellite operators, arranges for tasking, retrieves the information from the satellites, processes it, and passes it along to “a robust ecosystem of integrated technologies and services across all aspects of satellite operations.” It can even handle billing. As discussed in SpaceQ last year, Canada’s Wyvern Space has announced that they’ll be adding TerraStream to their hyperspectral imaging satellites, among many other companies. Skywatch co-founder and CEO James Slifierz described it as “Shopify for space companies.”
EarthCache-X expands their offerings to include new data types such as synthetic aperture radar imaging (SAR), digital elevation models (DEMs), aerial imagery, stereo/tri-stereo imagery, and hyperspectral/multispectral imagery. Customers seeking out these data types, and companies providing them, will be able to take advantage of the EarthCache platform.
Skywatch is bringing in an early set of partners for EarthCache-X that are “providing unique sensing technology underutilized by the commercial market.” ICEYE and Capella Space will be providing SAR capabilities. Satellogic will be providing multispectral and hyperspectral imaging and, at some point in the future, “daily global remaps.” Vexcel “runs the world’s largest aerial imagery and geospatial data program,” complementing EarthCache’s satellite imagery with “Oblique, True Ortho and Digital Surface Model data at up to 7.5 resolution.”
This will, according to SkyWatch, let them “create bespoke solutions for customers, defining the right product offerings and price points on a custom basis.” Skywatch also said that they will eventually migrate these kinds of sensing technologies “into fully-integrated product offerings, with standardized pricing and output types,” like their existing imagery offerings.
For more on SkyWatch, EarthCache and TerraStream, check out this interview on the Space Economy podcast between SpaceQ Editor-in-Chief Marc Boucher and Slifierz. Slifierz highlights how EarthCache has been seeing robust growth, with “18% to 20% growth month-over-month over the past 16 to 18 months,” how that growth had helped them close a successful Series B last year, how EarthCache has evolved, and how they approach remote work and productivity.