Myrna James Yoo
Publisher and
Managing Editor
Apogeo Spatial
www.ApogeoSpatial.com
Founder
Apogeo Advisors
www.ApogeoAdvisors.com [email protected]
Dear Readers,
Let’s start with art. A few months ago, I met Fawn Atencio, a Denver-based artist whose paintings look so much like photos of Earth that I was astounded, and inspired. Her work includes a message about a future with a lack of fresh water – an increasingly important message, as “Day Zero” (the day that water taps are predicted to run dry) looms closer for four million Cape Town, South Africa residents: April 12, 2018. Her timely gorgeous paintings, created with ink and printmaking materials, appears in the article here.
For an Executive Interview in the article here, I spoke with David Hartshorn of the Global VSAT Forum about the potential benefits of connecting the VSAT and Earth Observation communities. It is time for the different types of companies that are in the satellite business to work together and to learn from each other. Disaster preparedness and response are key areas for both sectors. Let’s discuss at upcoming events, such as the SmallSat Symposium, Satellite 2018, and various disaster preparedness meetings involving the U.N., NGOs, governments and industry.
This issue brings the 2nd in our new series on Geospatial Analytics-as-a-Service, which is clearly the hottest topic in our field, as aggressive companies launch and garner more investment than other types of space companies at the moment. Data analytics is the hottest game in every town, not just ours, and we have been covering it ongoing. In this issue are featured two companies with core strength in serving the agriculture sector, Astro Digital and Descartes Labs. Featured are Bronwyn Agrios, co-founder and head of product of the former, and Fritz Schlereth, head of product of the latter.
The value of these datasets, and the upcoming “megaset,” is something that Dylan Taylor has worked to quantify in his first article for Apogeo Spatial, “The Economic Impact of Space-Based Data.” Dylan is founder of Space Angels; his views and expertise are from the standpoint of capital and company valuation. The article posits that the new space-based datasets will create the first-ever multi-trillion dollar market cap company on Earth, in the not-too-distant future!
I’m excited to announce that Apogeo Spatial will be working with Innovation Pavilion (www.innovationpavilion.com) to ramp up their Colorado incubator for space startups, NovaSpace, and to bring the space community together for quarterly networking and content meetings. Space and satellite companies can now be featured within the Innovation Pavilion’s video segments, IPTV (www.ipnow.tv).
NovaSpace applies Innovation Pavilion’s vision of productive collisions and creative solutions to the space industry by facilitating an explosion of ideas. NovaSpace will provide Colorado’s space cluster, comprising 400-plus businesses and over 50,000 employees, with the community and platforms it needs to meet its growth potential by developing and strengthening connections between the space sector and the broader aerospace and defense industry.
Additional events in which we are involved include the International LiDAR Mapping Forum. Our LiDAR feature article, “Integrated UAV and LiDAR Solutions,” begins here and is about systems integration for UAV and sensor manufacturers, making it much easier for end users to get the data they need.
Women in Space is the theme of International Women’s Day on March 8. Dr. Mae Jemison, astronaut and first woman of color in space, will speak and I’m sure she will inspire us all. Her current mission is the 100 Year Starship (http://100yss.org/), which is working to send humans to different stars – “pursuing an extraordinary tomorrow to create a better world today.”
Cynda Collins Arsenault will be honored for her enduring work as founder of Secure World Foundation, an organization that is promoting cooperative solutions for space sustainability, and that has been a partner of Apogeo Spatial over the years.
Feeling inspired,
Myrna James Yoo
