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Company has eye to the sky
Satellite farm to host more dishes

Sarah Ladik
Northern News Services
Thursday, October 1, 2015

INUVIK
Inuvik's satellite installation will be getting a new addition in the near future, this one set to monitor satellites of a different kind.

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Planet Lab representative Joe Breu shows off a true-to-size model of the satellite his company proposes to track from a station in Inuvik at a council meeting Sept. 21. - Sarah Ladik/NNSL photo

Planet Lab is a San Francisco-based company looking to map the Earth's surface and update the information available to the public every day.

"The data you get from Google Maps is up to five years old," representative Joe Breu told Inuvik's town council last week.

"Planet Lab's strategy is to send up a fleet of small, commodity-built satellites."

The devices themselves, a model of which Breu brought to the meeting, measure only 10 cm by 10 cm by 30 cm. The goal is to send up 150 of them, then monitor them from 30 ground stations, spread across 10 sites all over the world, one of which could be Inuvik.

"Aerospace satellites take six to 16 years to build and launch," Breu said, adding that Planet Lab can send their devices into space every six weeks with updates and modifications.

"Our goal is to photograph each spot on planet Earth, once a day."

Breu explained the company wants to build a station as far north as it can to make best use of the sun-synchronous orbit on which the satellites will be launched. They will pass over Inuvik between 10 and 12 times a day, compared to four times a day at the equator.

"It makes Inuvik a good place," he said, referring to the coming fibre-optic line planned for the community.

"Having a station this far north and having the connectivity this place is going to have is going to be amazing."

In the council meeting, Breu was keen to mention that resolution from the units won't be nearly high enough to pick up individual people, negating privacy concerns but will be very useful in monitoring changes in the land and water in almost real-time.

The company plans to put up four dishes at the site in Inuvik, each measuring 4.5 metres, less than half the size of some of the dishes there now. They have 13 dishes built now but need more. Breu said that as of right now, satellites miss Inuvik by about 15 kilometres.

"This is a pretty exciting project out there for Inuvik," said Mayor Jim McDonald, talking about the satellite farm outside of town.

"Years ago, I remember there was a guy who came up with a little blow-up globe and presented it to us. I never imagined it would grow into this."

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