Space Business Podcast #86 Dan Katz, Orbital Sidekick, Hyperspectral Earth Observation

Space Business Podcast

Dan Katz is the co-founder and CEO of Orbital Sidekick, a San Francisco-based company deploying a constellation of hyperspectral remote sensing satellites. Among other things, I talk to Dan about the capabilities and use cases of this exciting technology. Enjoy!

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Timestamps

0:00 Intro
2:14 Elevator Pitch
3:55 What is Hyperspectral Earth Observation?
10:16 Multispectral vs. Hyperspectral vs. ... Ultraspectral(?)
14:40 The upper bounds of spectral resolution
18:55 Operating at night time and under cloud cover
22:43 Data and onboard processing
27:15 Business Model
30:50 Coverage
31:52 Resolution
36:28 Pipeline leaks as a use case
40:14 Orbital Sidekick's satellites
45:43 Selling to non-space customers
48:37 Vision for the company
52:42 Origin story
56:05 Space trends
58:00 Sci-Fi