Скачать или смотреть PSW 2520 Revolutionizing Earth Observation with Small Sats and AI | Will Marshall

Lecture Begins at 18:23
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September 5, 2025
Revolutionizing Earth Observation with SmallSats and AI: How Planet Lab’s Satellite Constellations Are Transforming Our Understanding of the World

Will Marshall
Founder & CEO
Planet

This lecture will discuss how a radical rethinking of satellite technology and mission architecture is reshaping how we observe and interact with our planet. Traditionally, Earth imaging relied on large, expensive satellites with limited revisit rates. Planet disrupted this paradigm by deploying the world’s largest constellation of small satellites — or “smallsats”—designed for high-frequency, high-resolution imaging of Earth’s entire landmass. These agile, short-lived spacecraft, launched in flocks and continuously refreshed, provide daily global coverage with visual and increasingly hyperspectral data, creating a living digital archive of our changing world.

The talk will explore how this unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution is being used across sectors: monitoring crop health and soil conditions in precision agriculture; detecting illegal deforestation and land degradation in near real time; tracking the progression of natural disasters to support emergency response; observing signs of climate change across ecosystems; and identifying the consequences of human activity from urbanization and infrastructure development to mass migration and the destruction wrought by war. It will also highlight the machine learning and data science techniques used to transform petabytes of satellite imagery into actionable intelligence.

The talk will examine not only the technical innovations behind Planet’s constellation, ranging from miniaturization and autonomous operations to rapid design cycles and cloud-based geospatial analytics, but also the broader implications of persistent, transparent Earth observation for science, policy, security, and sustainability. By making the planet observable every day, Planet is opening new possibilities for evidence-based global decision-making.

Will Marshall is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Planet Labs PBC (commonly known as Planet), a leading Earth imaging and geospatial data company headquartered in San Francisco. Under his leadership, Planet has built and operates the world’s largest constellation of Earth-observing satellites. Before founding Planet in 2010, Marshall served as a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, where he was involved in small spacecraft development, helped formulate the small spacecraft office there, worked as a systems engineer on the “LADEE” lunar orbiter mission, was a member of the science team for the “LCROSS” lunar impactor mission, served as Co-Principal Investigator on PhoneSat, and was the technical lead on research projects in space debris remediation.

Will’s research interests center on space systems engineering, Earth observation, climate monitoring, and the democratization of geospatial data for environmental and humanitarian applications. His work focuses on leveraging satellite constellations for near-real-time imaging of Earth to provide actionable insights for industries, governments, and nonprofits. He has also explored methods for reducing the cost and complexity of space missions through miniaturized satellite technology.

He is an author on a variety of scientific and technical publications in the fields of space science, Earth observation, and aerospace engineering. In addition, he has contributed to policy and public discourse on the role of space technology in sustainable development and global transparency.

He has received several honors and recognitions for his contributions to space innovation and entrepreneurship. These include being named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, being featured on Fast Company’s list of the Most Creative People in Business, and receiving The Royal Photographic Society) Award for Environmental Responsibility, together with Robbie Schingler. He and Planet have also been recognized by the World Economic Forum’s Tech Pioneers and by numerous space and technology industry groups for innovation in aerospace and data analytics.

Will earned a Masters in Physics/Space Science and Technology at the University of Leicester and a PhD in Physics at the University of Oxford, where he studied with Roger Penrose and Dirk Bouwmeester. Following his PhD he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at George Washington University and at Harvard.

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