0:02... understand a bit more about what all this is about, how they use artificial intelligence, and so on, we spoke for a few minutes with Emiliano Kargieman, founder of Satellogic, which is trending in space today. Hello, Emiliano, how are you?
0:56... start with the first question, which is the reason for this report: What does it mean for Satellogic to be one of the eight companies selected by NASA for its Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program, which is the most important part?
4:13And from what I read, it's until 2028, could that be?
4:39How does this apply to Satellogic's satellites or the democratization of space?
9:09And when is that going to happen, or start happening?
Improving life on Earth by observing it from space—it could be said that this is the main objective of Satellogic, an Argentine company that is now global, and for about 15 years has been dedicated to manufacturing small satellites, putting them into orbit so that they can take the best images of our planet. But the news here is that NASA has selected them to use their images in the service of Earth study for the US agency. This company also aims to democratize space. To understand a bit more about what all this is about, how they use artificial intelligence, and so on, we spoke for a few minutes with Emiliano Kargieman, founder of Satellogic, which is trending in space today. Hello, Emiliano, how are you? Thank you very much for these minutes.
Thank you very much. Well, let's start with the first question, which is the reason for this report: What does it mean for Satellogic to be one of the eight companies selected by NASA for its Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program, which is the most important part?
Yes. Well, look, in the first place, it is a significant point of pride for us. As you know, we started the company in Argentina 14 years ago. We build innovative technology, we have launched a number of satellites, and we are operating these satellites heavily. For everyone on the team, having NASA say, 'The quality of the data you are generating, what your satellites do, interests us and we want to be able to access that,' is an enormous point of pride. It's like a checkbox for us to say, 'Well, we finally made it, we are selling to NASA.' In that sense, it's great, and I think everyone on the team feels that way.
In practice, what does it mean specifically? NASA has a lot of principal investigators—they call them PIs—who are doing research in various things and different areas. The mechanism they have to access satellite-derived data is through this acquisition contract, which allows NASA to access data from a number of different commercial providers and various types of data. So in that sense, what this contract means for us is that our capability—the capacity of our constellation, our data archive, and also the capability to task our satellites to capture data—becomes part of the portfolio of capabilities available to NASA's PIs. If someone is doing a study on climate change in a location and needs satellite data, they can basically go in, access our API with NASA credentials, and download the data. That is concretely what it implies.
On the other hand, from a commercial standpoint, it is obviously super interesting for the company because there is an initial study contract that will be executed over the next 12 months. After that, with each PI who wants data, whenever we sell data, we generate revenue. The CSDA contract overall is the second largest data acquisition contract in the United States. There is the NRO contract called EOCL, which is a multi-billion-dollar contract, and then there is this contract, the CSDA, which has a ceiling of roughly $490 million. That does not mean all of it will go to Satellogic—there are a number of different providers within the contract, and the contract is also executed over several years—but we are on that list.
Kargieman, E. (2024, October 31). Interview: Satellogic is chosen by NASA, AI and democratization of space [Interview transcript]. Tendencia del Espacio. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1306627/
MLA
Emiliano Kargieman. "Interview: Satellogic is chosen by NASA, AI and democratization of space." Tendencia del Espacio, 31 Oct. 2024. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1306627/.
BibTeX
@misc{kargieman2024_1306627,
author = {Emiliano Kargieman},
title = {Interview: Satellogic is chosen by NASA, AI and democratization of space},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Tendencia del Espacio. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2024},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1306627/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
