SAN FRANCISCO – SkyWatch Space Applications is working with AgIntegrated Inc., a software consulting and technologies integration company based in State College, Pennsylvania, to share satellite imagery for precision agriculture.
Under an agreement announced June 23, AgIntegrated will offer customers access to SkyWatch EarthCache, a software platform offering access to multiple sources of satellite data, through its Field Data Exchange, an application program interface (API) for multiple data sources.
Graham Stickler, SkyWatch chief marketing officer, said the deal helps SkyWatch gain access to an important Earth-imagery market.
“We understand each vertical market has its particular needs,” Stickler told SpaceNews. “We can’t pretend to be experts in each one.”
Instead, SkyWatch focuses on making satellite imagery easy for people to access and forges agreements with companies that specialize in serving market niches.
SkyWatch is supplying the first imagery for AgIntegrated’s Field Data Exchange, home to other types of agriculture-related APIs. In the future, AgIntegrated plans to add aerial and drone imagery as well as data analytics to its platform, according to a June 23 news release.
SkyWatch, a Canadian company founded in 2014, offers customers access to Earth observation data from NASA, the European Space Agency, San Francisco-based Planet, SI Imaging Services of South Korea, Space View Technology of China and Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology of China. SkyWatch will bring in additional data providers as needed to keep up with customer demand, Stickler said.
For AgIntegrated, it makes sense to work with SkyWatch “to help solve some of the many challenges that have plagued agriculture when it comes to getting imagery data,” Mike Santostefeno, AgIntegrated business development vice president, said in a statement.
“SkyWatch is taking care of getting access to all these different datasets,” Nathan Faleide, AgIntegrated strategic initiatives manager, said in an interview. Plus, SkyWatch offers data à la carte, meaning agriculture industry customers do not need to purchase entire satellite scenes and resell the data field by field, he added.
SkyWatch customers can buy data for specific areas of interest as small as one-tenth of a square kilometer. In addition to current imagery, SkyWatch customers can task satellites for future collections and obtain archival data.
