Spaceborne Data Enters the Mainstream

Thanks to a diverse constellation of Earth observing satellites, humanity is effectively looking everywhere, at everything, all the time. And we've been quietly doing so for a long time. The challenge is that for many years these massive data archives have been stranded from operational, cloud-based, modern data science. That is changing fast. In this session we'll do a rapid primer on satellite imagery as a source of novel data about our Earth and discuss how machine learning is a key force for translating all of this Earth data into real insights. We'll use the global agriculture system as a case in point, highlighting some of potential that a spaceborne perspective brings to this vital sector of the economy. Along the way, we will explore some of the beautiful imagery of our home planet that fuels this new class of insights.