Planets Labs raises funds to launch a satellite squadron to planet Earth next year

Space Labs and Planet Labs have just achieved about US $ 52 million in fundraising money to realize the idea of ​​launching a satellite fleet to turn Earth into orbit in early 2014. With investment resources Planet Labs will have a total of 65 million dollars, thereby helping the company take a step closer to the goal of creating images and data about Earth for both commercial and humanitarian purposes.

Planet Labs was founded in 2010 with a team of engineers, scientists and developers who worked at companies such as SpaceX, Space Systems Loral, NASA and Google. The company emphasizes its goal "to provide global access to valuable information to change our planet".

Photo: syriastartimes.com

Last month, Planet Labs tested it into two 2 test satellites, also known as Doves. These are the third and fourth satellites since the first test took place in April. The experiment is to prepare Flock 1 - a future 28 satellite squadron that will join the satellites Doves from 1 to 4 became the largest system of Earth-saturated satellites launched into orbit.

While Doves are small satellites, fly at lower orbits and are cheaper to manufacture than satellites of Flock 1 squadron, Planet Labs says the recording of Doves is done at high frequencies. More and image quality is also better."By giving people a view of the Earth almost in real time, we intend to motivate people, companies and governments to act," according to an excerpt on the Planet website. Labs

The B series fundraiser for Planet Labs includes new investors such as Yuri Milner, Industry Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Lux Capital and Ray Rothrock. Investors include DFJ, Capricorn, O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures (OATV), Founders Fund, First Round Capital, Innovation Endeavors, Data Colelctive and AME Cloud Ventures.