General News: This Japanese company is planning to launch 50 satellites to capture Earth every day

[nairrk]

[Image: axelspace-picture.jpg]

Thanks to the internet and many superior software and APIs, we have data banks of every possible thing, some of which we aren’t even aware of. (Think of our data base recorded with companies like Google and Yahoo.) However, lately, things have become more extra-terrestrial than usual. Companies have started to shift focus from the planet we live on to our neighboring planets like Mars. Now that the outer space is the trend, if you step back and think of it, except for what occasionally comes in from NASA or other space agencies, we aren’t much aware of what goes on up there. Hence, in order to create a space data, a Japanese company called Axelspace, is planning to launch 50 satellites, so it can capture the pictures of the entire world every day.

Axelspace aims at making the space data available for anyone and everyone through its home-grown microsatellite technology. In the next six years, the company is planning on building AxelGlobe, a constellation of 50 satellites equipped with imaging sensors that are able to collectively monitor every place on the world. The project will allow anyone to tap into this mesh network of space data. Along with that the company is also going to provide paid access to an API that any developer can plug into. The data can be used for various things like mapping apps, counting objects on Earth, data for weather organizations, detecting changes in specific areas and tracking crop growth, or for simply some beautiful wallpapers of our planet.

However, the space data and the daily images of the entire earth, does raise the issue of privacy. These images can be used against people by tracking their whereabouts. However, in an interview with The Next Web, Axelspace founder and CEO Yuya Nakamura said that the company has deliberately made a choice to use much lower resolution cameras than that available, to ensure that people can not be identified. Although he ensured that the data will be perfectly usable.

[Image: acelspace.jpg]

The 50 satellites are scheduled to be be orbiting the earth by 2022, and in select places, data will already be available from 2018. The life of the project is about 25 to 30 years after which the satellites will automatically return to the earth’s atmosphere and land on the ground.

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