The Tiny Satellites Ushering in the New Space Revolution. A good rocket launch site has a few important characteristics. An unpopulated patch of land near an ocean is preferable, so no one gets showered with wayward bits of flaming metal. It’s also nice if it’s on the equator—like all spheres rotating on an axis, the Earth spins fastest in the middle, which provides rocket boosters with extra oomph. In other words, the best sites tend to be in remote, tropical locations. That such places are also often among the world’s poorest gives many launches a counterintuitive feel: billions of dollars in futuristic machinery rising up over rainforests and shantytowns.

That was so, at least, this February in Sriharikota, an island off India’s southeast coast, a couple of hours north of Chennai. To reach Sriharikota, which on maps looks like a 1. Eventually you reach a causeway that, during the dry season, is flanked by marshlands, salt ponds, and mud.

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At the end of this road is the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The facility, which opened in 1. Indian rocket scientist, looks more like a defunct disco than a gateway to tomorrow. At the check- in area, splotches of concrete peek through yellow- painted walls where photos of rockets and renowned engineers hang haphazardly. Beneath bulbs dangling from exposed wires, a team of friendly barefoot officials takes your information, then sends you outside to a mango- tree- shaded security gate. The police officers in olive- green uniforms and dark blue berets take no notice of the occasional white cow lumbering through the gate.

From there you reach a central compound of pastel- colored offices and living quarters, surrounded by a jungle of casuarina, eucalyptus, and palm trees. A ways away, at the water’s edge, is the launch pad. More cows collect outside the entry gate, while monkeys chatter in the trees. At 9: 2. 8 a. m. 1. Indian rocket lifted off, roaring through the hot, sticky air. Its payload consisted of 1. Russia in 2. 01. 4.

The largest of them weighed 1,5. Citrix Web Interface Update Client Info. India’s infrastructure and monitor urban and rural development. Nestled alongside were around a dozen smaller satellites from universities, startups, and research groups. What made the launch a record were the 8. Dove” satellites built by Planet Labs Inc., a startup in San Francisco. For the past few years, Planet has been sending batches of its Doves into orbit, each carrying a high- powered telescope and camera programmed to photograph a different swath of Earth. The 8. 8 launched from Sriharikota would join 6.

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Images beamed back by the 6. Hedge funds scour Walmart parking lots to measure traffic flows during back- to- school seasons. Farmers assess crop health and estimate optimal harvest times.

Activists track Amazonian deforestation and Syrian refugee camps. Spies monitor military buildups and trafficking operations. With all 1. 49 satellites in place, Planet will be able to photograph every inch of Earth’s surface every day—something even the U. S. Subscribe now.

See more Global Tech. Photographer: Ian Teh for Bloomberg Businessweek. This satellite constellation is one of many signs that the relationship between humans and space is changing in ways unseen since Russia and the U. S. Thanks to modern software, artificial intelligence, advances in electronics and materials, and a generation of aggressive, unconventional entrepreneurs, we are awash in space startups. These companies envision an era in which rockets take off daily, filling the skies with satellites that sense Earth’s every action—in effect building a computational shell around our planet. The people constructing this bustling new economic highway promise it will improve life down below, but the future they describe is packed with wonder and controversy in equal measure—and although few have noticed, it’s coming to pass right now.

The New Space revolution’s satellite boom began near another marshland, two oceans away from Sriharikota, where the San Francisco Bay meets the border of Mountain View, Calif. There you’ll find the NASA Ames Research Center, marked by odd- shaped buildings and some hangars that once housed Depression- era airships and enormous old wind tunnels. Since 2. 00. 6, under the stewardship of Pete Worden, Ames has garnered a reputation for far- flung experimentation. Worden, an astrophysicist and former U.

S. Air Force brigadier general, spent decades running Black Ops missions and oversaw the development of Ronald Reagan’s never- built Star Wars missile defense shield, among other jobs geared toward weaponizing space. At Ames he delighted in hiring adventurous young engineers for unusual research projects and forged strong ties with Silicon Valley, inviting startups to set up on NASA property and creating commercial links between the organization and Google Inc. He was also eccentric, occasionally donning a robe and taking to the surrounding fields with a staff to herd goats. Among Worden’s first hires were a pair of rabble- rousing engineers named Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler. The three men had met a few years earlier at a space conference in Houston, where Marshall and Schingler were handing out fliers decrying a renewed push under George W. Bush to militarize space. Schingler focused on making satellites for scientific missions, including one to find exoplanets, and on making NASA technology and data more accessible to the public.

Toward 2. 00. 9, Ames researchers started batting around the possibilities opened up by smartphones. The first i. Phone had been released two years earlier, and the scientists were awed that devices so small could pack so much horsepower and such sophisticated sensors and imaging technology. Could smartphones be the template for a new kind of satellite, they wondered? Typical satellites are about the size of a bus. They take years to design and build, weigh maybe 7,0. Earth. They’re technological marvels and yet so time- consuming to make and launch that they often run on antiquated computing systems for the decade or more they’re in use.

Convinced of the potential for improvement, the Ames scientists, led at first by Marshall and a young Australian physicist named Chris Boshuizen, and soon by Schingler as well, set to work on a version of a Cube. Sat, a satellite that can fit into a very small case. The device they hoped to build would be inexpensive and light, capable of being constructed quickly and deployed en masse to perform independent or synchronized tasks.

If space radiation fried a component now and again, no problem—the satellites would be so cheap as to verge on disposable. A rocket carries 1. Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Feb. Photographer: Sanjit Das for Bloomberg Businessweek. Boshuizen and Marshall assembled their first Cube. Sats by hand, ripping apart an HTC Nexus One and connecting antennas, a large battery pack, and other electronics to the smartphone’s innards.

Within a few months, they had a prototype performing well in NASA’s labs; a couple of months after that it successfully delivered data to Earth from a high- altitude balloon. At the time, Marshall and Schingler were living together in nearby Cupertino in a seven- bedroom, 5,0. Rainbow Mansion. Schingler and his girlfriend had set up the place for engineers and assorted idealists to live communally, holding salons by the koi pond at which they discussed the world’s problems. After Marshall and Boshuizen told Schingler about their work on the satellites, the house also became a research and development laboratory. As the three tested ideas in the garage at night and on weekends, they became convinced they had the basis for a new company. They initially decided to call it Cosmogia Inc.—“a nod to cosmos with some arbitrary ending,” Marshall says. Schingler, the chief strategy officer.

Photographer: Justin Kaneps for Bloomberg Businessweek. The idea behind the venture was to launch dozens, if not hundreds, of Cube. Sats, which would form a kind of line scanner for the Earth.