Ideas change everything

Tiny satellites show us the Earth as it changes in near-real-time

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Will Marshall |

TED2014

• March 2014

Satellite imaging has revolutionized our knowledge of the Earth, with detailed images of nearly every street corner readily available online. But Planet Labs' Will Marshall says we can do better and go faster -- by getting smaller. He introduces his tiny satellites -- no bigger than 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters -- that, when launched in a cluster, provide high-res images of the entire planet, updated daily.

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Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Satellite imaging has revolutionized our knowledge of the Earth, with detailed images of nearly every street corner readily available online. But Planet Labs' Will Marshall says we can do better and go faster -- by getting smaller. He introduces his tiny satellites -- no bigger than 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters -- that, when launched in a cluster, provide high-res images of the entire planet, updated daily.

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About the speaker

Space scientist

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At Planet, Will Marshall leads overall strategy for commercializing new geospatial data and analytics that are disrupting agriculture, mapping, energy, the environment and other vertical markets.

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This is every active satellite orbiting Earth

Check out an interactive graphic that shows more than 1,200 satellites in our orbit, broken out by size, location and country of origin.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.

Will Marshall: Tiny satellites show us the Earth as it changes in near-real-time | TED Talk