1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,240 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Art of Space Engineering, the podcast which 2 00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:14,520 explores the details behind how space systems come together and what lessons are learned 3 00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:15,520 along the way. 4 00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:19,920 I'm your host, Sarah Rogers, and this week's episode explores how Planet Labs manages operations 5 00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:22,360 for its constellation of over 200 satellites. 6 00:00:22,360 --> 00:00:26,520 Planet Labs was founded in 2010 with a goal to collect high-resolution imagery of the 7 00:00:26,520 --> 00:00:28,320 entire Earth every day. 8 00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:34,320 Today, Planet's dataset includes on average 1,700 images of every place on Earth. 9 00:00:34,320 --> 00:00:37,720 This has provided researchers, businesses, and governments with significant insight 10 00:00:37,720 --> 00:00:41,960 into our Earth, not only in monitoring its climate and natural processes, but also on 11 00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:45,240 how we as humans are continuing to shape our planet. 12 00:00:45,240 --> 00:00:49,280 And currently, Planet is working on a next generation of satellites which offer improved 13 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:51,400 image resolution and revisit rates. 14 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:55,080 This includes a new hyperspectral imaging satellite, TANIGER-1, which will launch this 15 00:00:55,080 --> 00:00:56,080 year. 16 00:00:56,080 --> 00:01:00,160 Mike is today Director of Mission Operations at Planet Diana Ferago. 17 00:01:00,160 --> 00:01:03,400 Her team is responsible for commissioning and operating the largest Earth-observing 18 00:01:03,400 --> 00:01:05,880 constellation of satellites in the world. 19 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:10,600 With an expertise in operations at scale, Diana has written papers and presented at conferences 20 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:15,000 such as the SmallSat, Grace Hopper, and the Space Operations Conference. 21 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:19,440 Prior to coming to Planet in 2014, Diana worked as a simulation engineer at the NASA Ames 22 00:01:19,440 --> 00:01:24,320 Research Center, performing human in-the-loop experiments in the vertical motion simulator. 23 00:01:24,320 --> 00:01:28,760 She also worked as the Mission Assurance Manager on the Astra project at NASA JPL, which helped 24 00:01:28,760 --> 00:01:33,760 to advance Mars surface instruments using a high-altitude balloon test environment. 25 00:01:33,760 --> 00:01:37,840 During her time at Planet, she has seen how operations processes have grown to efficiently 26 00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:42,320 commission and operate a large constellation with very little operator interaction. 27 00:01:42,320 --> 00:01:47,520 Now in this episode, we'll dive into how Planet Labs balances commissioning new satellites 28 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:51,720 while continuing to operate existing ones, what tools and automated features enable their 29 00:01:51,720 --> 00:01:56,640 constellations to run seamlessly, what aspects of constellation management are not as well 30 00:01:56,640 --> 00:02:01,320 known as they should be, and finally what we can learn from reflecting on a decade of 31 00:02:01,320 --> 00:02:02,320 operations. 32 00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:06,440 As satellite constellations like Planet Labs provide important everyday services for us 33 00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:10,560 here on Earth, I thought it would be useful to explore what actually goes into making 34 00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:15,320 their operations successful and what we should keep in mind as we find new needs for satellite 35 00:02:15,320 --> 00:02:18,840 constellations, whether that be within Leo or around the Moon. 36 00:02:18,840 --> 00:02:23,240 So I hope you find this episode as enjoyable as I did and that it provides some useful 37 00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:26,640 takeaways on the mission operations design side of things. 38 00:02:26,640 --> 00:02:39,280 Now without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Deanna for our go. 39 00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:44,800 Maybe before sort of jumping into the background and everything, one thing I guess the concept 40 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:50,320 of this interview sort of came up because I was thinking more about satellite constellations 41 00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:54,440 and swarm algorithms get better as well. 42 00:02:54,440 --> 00:02:59,400 There's a lot more to explore in terms of controlling constellations and I think maybe 43 00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:06,200 not as massive as what Planet does, but I think there's definitely a lot of the autonomous 44 00:03:06,200 --> 00:03:12,720 operations that you guys do that people don't really think about when they think about constellations. 45 00:03:12,720 --> 00:03:18,480 And so I thought that would be a cool thing to share on this podcast and in sort of looking 46 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:26,080 through everything I realized it's been like over 10 years since Planet has actually started. 47 00:03:26,080 --> 00:03:30,560 So I think there's some cool things that we can touch on in this interview just with like 48 00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:35,080 how it's grown over the years and lessons learned from that. 49 00:03:35,080 --> 00:03:42,520 So I guess really like the first thing I'd want to say is just like congrats. 50 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:50,080 I remember when I was first working on CubeSats back in the 2015-ish timeframe, the dove constellation 51 00:03:50,080 --> 00:03:57,720 was a huge thing and everyone was really excited about just the ability to launch all of these 52 00:03:57,720 --> 00:04:03,400 CubeSats to do daily monitoring of the Earth and now it's like everyone's using Planet 53 00:04:03,400 --> 00:04:05,400 data and that's so cool. 54 00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:07,240 It is very cool. 55 00:04:07,240 --> 00:04:15,400 I am always amazed at the number of scientific papers and research and just how much our 56 00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:26,240 data has been utilized across both like the academic fields as well as commercial industries 57 00:04:26,240 --> 00:04:34,320 and it really has so many use cases and exposes a lot of information that we really didn't 58 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:35,960 have before I think. 59 00:04:35,960 --> 00:04:42,840 So I agree it's been really amazing to see how the product has evolved over time and 60 00:04:42,840 --> 00:04:45,680 continues to evolve. 61 00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:46,680 Definitely agree there. 62 00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:52,960 Like I even like I went to AGU back in December and just like seeing all of the scientific 63 00:04:52,960 --> 00:04:56,760 papers there just like you were saying on like how many people have used Planet data 64 00:04:56,760 --> 00:05:00,600 for helping us understand more about Earth I think is so cool. 65 00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:10,360 And I feel like that part of the company or that part of what we do is really still so 66 00:05:10,360 --> 00:05:16,120 novel to me because my head is very much in just the space systems, mission operations 67 00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:17,120 side of things. 68 00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:26,320 So what we care about is maximizing the amount of imagery that we can capture in downlink 69 00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:33,200 and optimizing that funnel making sure everything is as efficient as possible. 70 00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:39,000 There's always going to be room for improvement and there's always a new bottlenecks or new 71 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:48,880 challenges where we can further explore how do we reduce this mean time to recovery or 72 00:05:48,880 --> 00:05:56,560 this reaction time so that anything that happens on our fleet or on a per satellite 73 00:05:56,560 --> 00:06:03,000 basis like we can get that satellite back to an imaging state as quickly as possible. 74 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:07,640 And if it can't go back to an imaging state let's use it as an on orbit test bed. 75 00:06:07,640 --> 00:06:13,160 Let's continue to get as much utility as possible out of these satellites and exploring opportunities 76 00:06:13,160 --> 00:06:14,160 there. 77 00:06:14,160 --> 00:06:22,840 So yeah, the product side of things for me is still always very fascinating to listen 78 00:06:22,840 --> 00:06:27,200 to because we just don't get exposed to that as much on a daily basis. 79 00:06:27,200 --> 00:06:31,560 I think maybe that's kind of a good transition to a question I always like to start out with 80 00:06:31,560 --> 00:06:35,880 which is just getting to know a little bit more about you and your background. 81 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:42,160 So what sort of drew you to space and to planet labs and what does an average day look like 82 00:06:42,160 --> 00:06:43,160 for you? 83 00:06:43,160 --> 00:06:44,840 Sure. 84 00:06:44,840 --> 00:06:52,640 So I studied aeronautical and astronautical engineering at University of Washington and 85 00:06:52,640 --> 00:07:00,480 I think the reason why I went to this field was first off space is so cool. 86 00:07:00,480 --> 00:07:06,040 Everything about it I just think it's the problems, the challenges, the idea that we 87 00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:14,320 were able to put humans on the moon given the level of technology we had at that time. 88 00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:23,120 It still blows my mind and I think I get very motivated when I sense that, I don't know 89 00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:25,760 if it's a good way to say this, but here's an example. 90 00:07:25,760 --> 00:07:29,040 So I'm very inspired by my mom's journey. 91 00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:38,600 She immigrated from Vietnam as a refugee. She came here when she was 19 years old and 92 00:07:38,600 --> 00:07:47,520 really didn't know any English and she became a mechanical engineer and worked her whole 93 00:07:47,520 --> 00:07:50,520 career in the field. 94 00:07:50,520 --> 00:07:58,720 She was a working mom and so I have always been inspired by how she was able to overcome 95 00:07:58,720 --> 00:08:04,160 so many challenges and to never let things hold her back. 96 00:08:04,160 --> 00:08:10,720 And so I think I wanted to go into this field because it's hard and I wanted to prove to 97 00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:14,200 myself like nothing is too hard. 98 00:08:14,200 --> 00:08:20,320 This is, it's just really fun for me to solve hard problems. 99 00:08:20,320 --> 00:08:28,840 When I graduated, I went to work at NASA JPL for a few years and then I came up to the 100 00:08:28,840 --> 00:08:36,280 Bay Area and worked at Ames Research Center and as well as in the Bay that I became reacquainted 101 00:08:36,280 --> 00:08:40,720 with someone I knew from JPL who was working at Planet at the time. 102 00:08:40,720 --> 00:08:50,360 So through him, I came for a tour and I was just so amazed at the pace, at the, you know, 103 00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:53,520 just the vibe of happening in that office. 104 00:08:53,520 --> 00:08:59,920 It was just so different from everything that I experienced up to that point in my career. 105 00:08:59,920 --> 00:09:05,880 And a couple months after that, I saw a job description on their website that sounded really 106 00:09:05,880 --> 00:09:12,120 interesting and so I applied to be a spaceship captain, which was the title of the job at 107 00:09:12,120 --> 00:09:13,120 the time. 108 00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:18,760 And since then, the whole time I've been at Planet, I've worked in mission operations. 109 00:09:18,760 --> 00:09:20,200 I really love it. 110 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:28,280 I think you have to understand so many parts of the system. 111 00:09:28,280 --> 00:09:37,400 So it has that aspect of like a systems engineer type role, but you also have to think through 112 00:09:37,400 --> 00:09:47,000 a lot of implementation and execution of tooling and creating, you know, metrics and doing 113 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:48,000 analysis. 114 00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:53,680 And it's just a very complex job that no matter what part of it you're interested in 115 00:09:53,680 --> 00:10:02,400 or if you have like a specific interest in a subsystem or a part of that operation, you're 116 00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:03,720 able to dive into it. 117 00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:10,200 So I think that's what's really, that's what drew me to my job specifically. 118 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:16,720 And to Planet in general, just the mission itself, I was very inspired by. 119 00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:22,920 It was more of a, if you build it, they will come, I would say in the beginning. 120 00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:29,720 I don't think, you know, it was very theoretical and everyone was very optimistic. 121 00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:34,720 When we have this product, people will find it useful because no one was doing it, you 122 00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:38,120 know, at least to that level. 123 00:10:38,120 --> 00:10:46,920 So yeah, it was just a really exciting time to join the company and to get that to production. 124 00:10:46,920 --> 00:10:51,120 No, I think that's just a very beautiful and inspirational story. 125 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:57,160 And was it that job, there was really called Spaceship Captain, that's wild. 126 00:10:57,160 --> 00:10:58,160 That's so cool. 127 00:10:58,160 --> 00:11:04,840 I know, I still have some business cards that say that just so I could prove to myself 128 00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:07,480 that really was my job title for a while. 129 00:11:07,480 --> 00:11:08,480 Yeah, that's awesome. 130 00:11:08,480 --> 00:11:13,440 Yeah, I think, I hope that they didn't get rid of that or if not, they should bring it 131 00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:14,440 back. 132 00:11:14,440 --> 00:11:15,440 I agree. 133 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:16,440 They should bring it back. 134 00:11:16,440 --> 00:11:25,080 Yeah, I think over the years, you know, we, the team grew and we wanted to make things 135 00:11:25,080 --> 00:11:28,120 more consistent across all of the operations teams. 136 00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:36,000 So unfortunately, that's no longer a thing, but who knows, never say never, it may come 137 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:37,000 back. 138 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:39,640 We still have some meetings that are called captain's meetings. 139 00:11:39,640 --> 00:11:42,840 So it's still in the culture. 140 00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:51,720 Okay, well, if you need a vote from outside of planet, I will happily mass email anyone. 141 00:11:51,720 --> 00:11:53,640 Thank you. 142 00:11:53,640 --> 00:11:57,680 Just bug them to death. 143 00:11:57,680 --> 00:12:05,600 I can imagine too, from the operation side, just thinking through more of how things work, 144 00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:10,920 I feel like that's really how you do get to know the system at the end of the day is, 145 00:12:10,920 --> 00:12:15,480 like, okay, well, what do these things actually do and what commands do you send and then 146 00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:19,960 what are the nuances associated with those kinds of commands? 147 00:12:19,960 --> 00:12:28,640 Do you, because I know planet has been sort of expanding to incorporate other types of 148 00:12:28,640 --> 00:12:30,440 imagers like hyper spectral. 149 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:36,200 So do you get brought in sort of at the design phase with those as well to kind of help, 150 00:12:36,200 --> 00:12:38,720 help incorporate lessons learned too? 151 00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:39,720 Absolutely. 152 00:12:39,720 --> 00:12:49,880 Yeah, and I think, depending on the subsystem, to the degree, and very, but we absolutely 153 00:12:49,880 --> 00:12:53,800 incorporate our lessons learned into our new missions. 154 00:12:53,800 --> 00:12:59,040 And it's really exciting with the tech demo that flew late last year because this is a 155 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:05,960 brand new bus, a spacecraft bus that's going to be flying different types of payloads this 156 00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:08,240 year. 157 00:13:08,240 --> 00:13:18,800 And the bus development, you know, operators, we've been involved of, I would say, for the 158 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:25,760 last three years, really building out the requirements from the con ops level, you know, 159 00:13:25,760 --> 00:13:33,240 the concept of operations, determining, you know, how do we meet the requirements of the 160 00:13:33,240 --> 00:13:39,320 product and the mission requirements, and this is how we expect it will a day in the 161 00:13:39,320 --> 00:13:41,520 life of the satellite would look like. 162 00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:47,520 And then from there, deriving the subsystem requirements, and they've changed, you know, 163 00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:55,800 since the original design, but operators have definitely had like input in a voice along 164 00:13:55,800 --> 00:13:57,040 the way. 165 00:13:57,040 --> 00:14:04,360 And we helped to validate the system, the months leading up to pack out of our tech demo last 166 00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:10,120 year, we were running end to end tests with mission control in the loop, making sure our 167 00:14:10,120 --> 00:14:16,840 scripts were going to work out the gate, that we would be able to update flight software 168 00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:26,800 in the first day, and that all of those operations were de risk as much as possible. 169 00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:33,280 And so, and we still manage the most flight like test bed on the ground to make sure that 170 00:14:33,280 --> 00:14:38,120 whatever we're going to do on orbit, we feel confident and have tested fully on the ground 171 00:14:38,120 --> 00:14:39,120 first. 172 00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:48,040 So, yeah, I think I can't really say compared to operations at other companies, but I do 173 00:14:48,040 --> 00:14:54,080 feel like we are pulled in very early on for these project life cycles. 174 00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:58,040 Oh, that's really cool. And this is the Pelican one tech demo. 175 00:14:58,040 --> 00:14:59,560 Yes, that's correct. 176 00:14:59,560 --> 00:15:02,760 So you guys are in the commissioning phase of that right now. 177 00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:08,080 Yes, that's correct. And I would say for a tech demo, the commissioning phase can, you 178 00:15:08,080 --> 00:15:19,320 know, go as long as you wanted to because we are really stress testing the system, we're 179 00:15:19,320 --> 00:15:28,480 trying to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible to fold those lessons into the 180 00:15:28,480 --> 00:15:34,400 next build for when the next Pelican launch. 181 00:15:34,400 --> 00:15:40,960 So commissioning has been going really well. We're updating flight software like on a daily 182 00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:48,280 basis, both for like bug fixes of things that we've learned along the way. 183 00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:53,720 So those are treated pretty like urgently and high priority depending on the flavor 184 00:15:53,720 --> 00:15:54,720 of it. 185 00:15:54,720 --> 00:15:59,200 And meanwhile, also doing flight software updates for things that were already on the 186 00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:00,720 developmental roadmap. 187 00:16:00,720 --> 00:16:07,600 So that team has a lot of like priorities. They have to juggle that get decided with 188 00:16:07,600 --> 00:16:13,720 us and with other subsystems depending on, you know, who all the stakeholders are. But 189 00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:18,240 when we launched the tech demo, you know, we launched hardware that still didn't have 190 00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:24,560 the software to support it. So we're kind of like building the ship as we, as we, you 191 00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:32,960 know, fly it. And it's really exciting to be able to do that so rapidly. But it can 192 00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:39,560 also be, you know, stressful because there's a lot of unknown unknowns and you want to 193 00:16:39,560 --> 00:16:45,240 continue to progress down this developmental roadmap and not get too distracted by, you 194 00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:52,200 know, the fires that might happen along the way. So it's a dialogue and we've made a 195 00:16:52,200 --> 00:16:54,880 lot of progress along the way so far. 196 00:16:54,880 --> 00:16:58,960 So I guess this wasn't the direction that I was planning on asking questions. But now 197 00:16:58,960 --> 00:16:59,960 I'm curious. 198 00:16:59,960 --> 00:17:09,000 So if I'm allowed to ask. So this is the Pelican one tech demo is meant to upgrade the SkySat 199 00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:16,360 constellation and provide just higher resolution, faster rate visit rates. This is, is it visible 200 00:17:16,360 --> 00:17:18,960 or it's not hyper spectral? 201 00:17:18,960 --> 00:17:24,560 It's not hyper spectral. That's correct. Yeah. The hyper spectral mission is Tannager, which 202 00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:31,920 will fly on the same bus as Pelican. And that's a new product for us. We currently don't have 203 00:17:31,920 --> 00:17:39,800 any hyper spectral imagery, you know, coming from our doves or SkySats, but you're correct. 204 00:17:39,800 --> 00:17:46,320 The Pelican fleet will be what eventually replaces the SkySats when they reach end of 205 00:17:46,320 --> 00:17:47,320 mission. 206 00:17:47,320 --> 00:17:56,280 So like, I guess, since you guys have the existing constellation, what is, if you're allowed 207 00:17:56,280 --> 00:18:02,760 to say like, what's what's so new about the underlying software to where you guys are 208 00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:08,480 having this sort of do more of a tech demo and this like rapid software upgrade? 209 00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:19,920 Yeah. So the SkySats, when they became part of planet, so planet acquired Karabella and 210 00:18:19,920 --> 00:18:25,480 along with it, the SkySats, Leeds and the people who operate them and, you know, along 211 00:18:25,480 --> 00:18:31,200 to and I believe the SkySats were actually delivered to Skybox and Karabella by Space 212 00:18:31,200 --> 00:18:37,360 Systems Laurel. So they were built out of house. And the Pelican bus is all designed 213 00:18:37,360 --> 00:18:45,920 and built in house. And we needed to, you know, find a way to eventually like replace 214 00:18:45,920 --> 00:18:55,280 and improve the SkySat fleet once they deorbit. So this and creating a common bus was also 215 00:18:55,280 --> 00:19:02,080 a benefit because we were able to see other opportunities to fly, you know, external customer 216 00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:09,040 or partner payloads. So Tannager is a partnership with Carbon Mapper and JPL. So there was a 217 00:19:09,040 --> 00:19:14,160 lot of like overlapping, you know, benefits and requirements that we could see across 218 00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:20,480 both of these missions. And that's how the common bus kind of came to fruition. And 219 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:27,400 in terms of what we gain, you know, the initial Pelicans that we launch will, they should 220 00:19:27,400 --> 00:19:35,080 be like a product. It should map like one to one with SkySats. But then over time, like 221 00:19:35,080 --> 00:19:45,280 we have the ability to improve that resolution further to also have additional technology 222 00:19:45,280 --> 00:19:54,000 on board to have very rapid low latency and tasking and downlinking. So there are some, 223 00:19:54,000 --> 00:20:00,080 yeah, there are some capabilities that the SmallSat bus has that SkySat currently do 224 00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:03,960 not, which will open up a lot of opportunities on the product side. 225 00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:09,960 Oh, that's so cool. I didn't, I didn't actually know that about the Pelican missions. So that's, 226 00:20:09,960 --> 00:20:14,000 that's awesome. I know it's like, it's always hard to like manage things when they, I guess 227 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:18,280 when things overlap. So that's, that's cool that that's working out very well. 228 00:20:18,280 --> 00:20:22,840 Yeah. And, you know, we're, we're going to have to explore that scenario with the Super 229 00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:28,640 does as well. They're not, you know, nearly as close to end of mission as the SkySats. 230 00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:36,600 But we need to have a continuity story there. And, you know, do we use the same bus platform? 231 00:20:36,600 --> 00:20:42,840 Is this still going to be a CubeSat? Are we going to use the common bus for those, for 232 00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:47,640 those Sats? Like it's, there's a lot of trades that are happening right now, but really the 233 00:20:47,640 --> 00:20:54,800 difference between the Doves and, you know, what will follow is originally it was more 234 00:20:54,800 --> 00:21:01,240 capability driven. And then now we're very much more in like a product driven design 235 00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:02,520 phase. 236 00:21:02,520 --> 00:21:08,600 Maybe to transition next, since we're talking about commissioning for the tech demo, I think, 237 00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:14,240 I think it would be cool to maybe first start off by giving an overview of what a typical 238 00:21:14,240 --> 00:21:20,160 like day in the life looks like for the commissioning phase, maybe looking at sort of the, the Dove 239 00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:26,960 constellation as an example. So like say when, when a, when a flock of Dove satellites are 240 00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:33,440 deployed and they enter this sort of early checkout or commissioning phase, what does 241 00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:37,920 that look like? What activities are going on? And then how do you know when you're ready 242 00:21:37,920 --> 00:21:41,880 to transition to sort of nominal mode operations? 243 00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:51,560 Yeah, great question. So when we launch a new flock of Doves, we already have existing 244 00:21:51,560 --> 00:21:57,600 Doves on orbit that are in production, that are utilizing, you know, ground station time 245 00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:03,280 and contacts. And then all of a sudden we have a new set of Doves on orbit and they're 246 00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:08,160 all clumped together really tight. So they're going to be competing with one another for 247 00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:14,120 the same ground station accesses as well as with, you know, production fleets. So the 248 00:22:14,120 --> 00:22:22,600 way that we manage that is we will target only a subset of the set. Initially we actually 249 00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:30,640 have a two to three set that we call our canaries. And we push those through commissioning as 250 00:22:30,640 --> 00:22:38,800 quickly as possible just to make sure there aren't any issues that we weren't able to 251 00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:43,880 see on the ground. At this point, like, there's nothing new that should be really showing 252 00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:49,240 up with canaries. But they give us the up, we purposely choose the canaries that are 253 00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:56,200 at the beginning, middle and end of the deployment sequence so that while we're talking to each 254 00:22:56,200 --> 00:23:03,520 of those canaries in any ground station contact, we will also be asking, hey, how are all your 255 00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:08,920 neighbors doing as well? And we will get like basic health telemetry for all of the, essentially 256 00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:15,800 all of the sats from the get go so that we know, okay, there's no, there's no single 257 00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:22,800 sad that is particularly, you know, low power or, you know, tumbling at high rates, or we 258 00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:28,400 can't communicate with any particular satellite. So it's just an initial like sanity check, 259 00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:34,680 okay, everything is good. Let's just proceed with the plan. The canaries go through commissioning. 260 00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:42,920 And then after that, we start kicking off our batch of sets to do bus commissioning. 261 00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:50,760 And this is all automated. So we will have the list of hardware IDs that we want to progress 262 00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:59,880 through. And the commissioning automation will tell the satellite to detumble, then deploy 263 00:23:59,880 --> 00:24:06,320 its solar panels, we know it's in a good power state, and then it will start scheduling more 264 00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:14,960 high powered activities that require additional CPU power or turning the payload on. We'll 265 00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:23,760 be doing, you know, GNC calibration activities. And once all of those calibration activities 266 00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:28,160 are done, then we achieve first light and we will turn on the camera. And because we've 267 00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:33,200 already gotten all of our calibration activities out of the way, the first images the satellite 268 00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:40,560 downlinks should already be customer quality images. And the automation essentially only 269 00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:47,000 will actively commission like five to 10 sets at a time, depending on the number that we 270 00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:54,080 choose for that flock. And that's how we manage round access contention between the commissioning 271 00:24:54,080 --> 00:25:04,960 sets and the production sets. So there's never any large surge of resource fogging, essentially. 272 00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:12,520 So once the satellites are all imaging, then we will enable differential drag on all of 273 00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:20,720 them so that the differential drag is essentially how we start getting the satellites out into 274 00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:31,160 a more equidistant position around the planet. And it's done by orienting the satellite in 275 00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:37,240 either a low drag or high drag configuration, while it's not imaging or downlinking. So 276 00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:44,280 basically when it's just in a background mode, not doing anything actively, we will set its 277 00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:51,920 orientation to low drag or high drag. And that schedule is calculated and maintained 278 00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:57,480 by our orbits team. And so over time, all of the satellites will start spacing themselves 279 00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:05,440 out. This will reduce ground station contention. It will also increase the amount of unique 280 00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:12,600 imagery those satellites are producing. But I think your question was, at what point do 281 00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:22,040 we say they're like production ready? I would say it's once the imaging team has signed 282 00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:28,160 off, the satellite is whitelisted. And what they do is make sure that the satellite imagery 283 00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:38,000 looks calibrated, looks like it's within the range that is expected for customer specifications. 284 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:44,160 And then they're whitelisted. And then all of the imagery that that satellite had been 285 00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:51,600 taking since it started imaging will be retroactively whitelisted too. So all of those images will 286 00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:56,600 be put into our catalog and accessible to our customers. 287 00:26:56,600 --> 00:27:07,000 Okay, gosh, so many follow up questions. So maybe to start with the like, so if you're 288 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:11,400 deploying, because Fox are usually, they're usually about 20, correct? 289 00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:20,320 They've really ranged. Yeah, we I would say these days, they're more in the 30 to 36 range. 290 00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,840 Okay. 24 to 36. 291 00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:31,360 Okay. So you deploy all 36 at once. And then, you know, all 36 sort of start autonomously 292 00:27:31,360 --> 00:27:36,600 detumbling. But then you start commissioning about 10 at a time, while the other ones are 293 00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:41,800 just kind of chilling. And that's sort of like all automated, you're just focusing on 294 00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:46,680 like a small subset to make sure that they're good before moving to say like the next 10 295 00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:47,680 in the sequence. 296 00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:51,840 Yeah, so it actually used to be that way, but we would do like 10, and then move to the 297 00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:59,840 next 10. Now it's much more fluid. So as soon as one satellite is done, then it will automatically 298 00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:07,960 put one satellite into the into the active rotation. So it's much less like chunked out 299 00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:09,960 than it used to be. Yeah. 300 00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:15,960 Oh, interesting. Okay. And so that's just managed by all of your ground tools that you 301 00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:21,480 understand, like where the satellites are. So it has the the TLE of that spacecraft and 302 00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:27,200 how to communicate with it. And then it kind of just puts the next one into the queue. 303 00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:35,360 Exactly. Yeah. So our operational scripts will know what state of commissioning the 304 00:28:35,360 --> 00:28:43,080 satellite is in, and it will record that state on the ground. And so every time it talks 305 00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:46,960 to another satellite, it knows exactly like, Oh, okay, this satellite should have just 306 00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:52,640 de-tumbled. So I'm going to check on how the de-tumble went and what its rates are. And 307 00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:57,040 if it looks good, I'm going to move it to the next state, which is deploying its solar 308 00:28:57,040 --> 00:29:04,040 panels. And then the next contact will run. It knows that the panel deploy activity executed 309 00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:09,360 and then will follow up and follow and check whether that was completed. And then once 310 00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:16,320 a satellite is past panel deploy, then we will actually put the new a new satellite into 311 00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:24,080 the queue to start its best commissioning timeline. So our the purpose is really to get all of 312 00:29:24,080 --> 00:29:31,840 the satellites to a panel deployed state as quickly as possible, so that we can minimize 313 00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:38,240 the risk of potentially getting into a tumbled orientation that puts us in a power negative 314 00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:47,120 state because it has happened. The, you know, it's it's low likelihood, but it always requires 315 00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:53,760 like an operator to intervene and like, you know, take manual action and do things a little 316 00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:59,960 bit out of order. And so it's not ideal. So really, getting all of the satellites to a 317 00:29:59,960 --> 00:30:05,200 panel deployed states quickly as possible just decreases the chances that that will happen. 318 00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:13,280 Gotcha. One other thing I wanted to ask about too was, and this this touched on one thing 319 00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:19,920 I remember reading in the one of the papers on the the planet operations and sort of ground 320 00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:27,800 architecture was a tool that you guys use for communicating with the satellites once they're 321 00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:31,720 deployed because like as they're passing over the ground station, like they're all very 322 00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:40,400 close together. And so you but you still have to target like, you have to know which TLE 323 00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:48,000 belongs to which satellite and you have to target like that specific frequency. And sort 324 00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:54,920 of making sure that you have the right TLE and the right spacecraft parameters is it's 325 00:30:54,920 --> 00:31:00,720 kind of a it's a difficult part of like the early operations because you know, the TLE 326 00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:07,160 might be wrong, especially if you were like very lumped together. So when you're saying 327 00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:13,360 that you also talk to all of the neighboring satellites within that deployed flock, are 328 00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:21,480 you guys using that tool to in order to do that? Yeah, so we should have pretty accurate 329 00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:28,160 knowledge of where our satellites are in relation to each other using ranging data. And that's 330 00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:35,080 what we we target is is is knowing, you know, which satellites are within the beam with 331 00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:44,160 that we could communicate with and then requesting health telemetry from those hardware IDs. And 332 00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:51,920 as long as they're within our, you know, communication beam with, then they should respond to their 333 00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:58,720 hardware ID command. And that's how we can then also reaffirm like, okay, we we know 334 00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:02,000 where this satellite is, and and it's in a healthy state. 335 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:11,200 Oh, gosh, yeah, that was, I guess I've had like one keeps that operation story, which 336 00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:19,040 when our when our keeps that deployed, along with 10 other keepsats from other universities, 337 00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:25,120 we had there was one keeps that that was on the same frequency as us. And we were having 338 00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:30,120 issues communicating in the beginning. So like, we were having a hard time hitting the 339 00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:36,320 TLE on our spacecraft. And then we would get telemetry and we think it was ours. But it 340 00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:42,520 was the one from the other spacecraft. So it was so yeah, so I like I think because 341 00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:45,800 this is you're referring to the mega health app. 342 00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:51,520 Yeah, okay. Yeah, so it's a task that we ran called mega health. 343 00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:55,880 Yeah, I love that name too. But yeah, when I when I read that, I was like, that's so 344 00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:56,880 useful. 345 00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:05,280 Yeah, it was very useful because it also meant that we didn't have to have just a one sat 346 00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:10,960 per contact allocation to get information. And especially when we were commissioning 347 00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:17,120 like 88 sets, we did not have the number of contacts to be able to get through everything 348 00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:21,120 like it would have taken weeks for us to just hear back from each satellite. So this is 349 00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:30,560 essential for us to get through that commissioning phase. And your story reminded me of one of 350 00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:37,520 our stories where I forget which launch it was. But I think we were launching with Aspire 351 00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:46,160 as well. And after a couple of days, like, we still couldn't contact one of our sets. 352 00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:52,000 And we found out that Spire also couldn't contact one of their sets. And it turned out 353 00:33:52,000 --> 00:34:01,120 that their satellite their lemur had ended up in the middle of our in our of our flock. 354 00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:07,080 Unfortunately, our satellite was not in their orbit. So our hypothesis was that it was stuck 355 00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:16,040 in the deployer. Because we we spiral searched everywhere for that satellite. And we couldn't 356 00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:20,480 feel confident that it was it was actually deployed. So but it was fun that we found 357 00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:23,840 the lemur in the middle of our doubts. 358 00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:28,400 Oh, wow. That's wild. 359 00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:32,720 I wanted to add a quick aside on the TLEs just going off of my last statement since 360 00:34:32,720 --> 00:34:37,680 I didn't really relay our experience on Phoenix in the right way during the interview. And 361 00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:41,520 so there's a few things I want to correct there. For those who haven't heard of this 362 00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:46,080 before, a TLE stands for two line element set. This provides information on spacecrafts 363 00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:50,680 ported to velocity. Now before you deploy, your spacecraft is assigned an ID which will 364 00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:55,560 be linked with the TLE information. If you're part of a deployment of multiple satellites, 365 00:34:55,560 --> 00:35:01,080 then this is tracked in the order of when you deploy. So you would say, okay, the first 366 00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:04,640 satellite in the deployment sequence will have this ID. Second one will have this ID 367 00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:09,640 and so on and so forth. Now in general, TLEs are pretty accurate on the first deployment, 368 00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:14,360 but you still need to confirm that you can talk to the satellite and that your TLE has 369 00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:19,800 the right information. Now, however, if you have issues contacting your satellite after 370 00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:24,920 deployment and other people are also having difficulty in confirming this TLE can become 371 00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:29,280 very difficult to do early on because the satellites are still going to be very close 372 00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:34,480 together. So on the operation side at the ground station, what you see when you're looking 373 00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:40,080 for these TLEs is that a certain TLE is going to pass over your ground station at a given 374 00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:47,440 time and then you use that to identify which ones you want to prioritize studying and trying 375 00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:53,720 to figure out if that belongs to your spacecraft. And so sometimes early on, you know, TLEs can 376 00:35:53,720 --> 00:35:58,200 be right on top of each other as satellites are still close together. So you can try one 377 00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:03,120 and it may seem like it works, but there might still be a little bit of gray area there. 378 00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:07,840 And in addition to that, since you only get a couple of good ground station passes each 379 00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:12,680 day, if you're just using, you know, your own university ground station, then it can 380 00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:18,600 take a while to cycle through all the ones that you're trying to try. Now, after a while, 381 00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:22,960 the spacecraft will start to drift apart in the orbit and the TLEs become much easier 382 00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:28,960 to isolate and figure out which one actually belongs to you. Now, to tie this back to the 383 00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:33,960 personal story that I was trying to tell Deanna, now when Phoenix first deployed, we were able 384 00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:40,320 to see a heartbeat after 30 minutes of deployment when all of our hardware was activated and 385 00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:45,760 we had this automated health beacon just transmitting out. Everything looked healthy. We were very 386 00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:51,600 excited to see all of the telemetry. But after the first day, we ended up having a power 387 00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:58,400 anomaly that we still were never able to fully explain. But the upshot of that is that our 388 00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:04,040 computer stopped responding. And so our regular health beacon was no longer coming out and 389 00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:11,080 we weren't able to send commands to our computer that would request additional information. 390 00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:15,600 Now, eventually we started trying commands that were very specific to our radio, which 391 00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:20,800 was working, and actually responded. And that was the process that we used to actually confirm 392 00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:26,360 which TLE was ours. But prior to that, we were just, you know, we saw that a particular 393 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:30,720 TLE was coming over our ground station, we would pick it, we'd try some commands, hear 394 00:37:30,720 --> 00:37:36,880 nothing, maybe try it again the second time that it was going over our ground station, 395 00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:43,400 and then say, okay, you know, maybe we should move on to another one that is still unconfirmed 396 00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:48,560 to be with the satellite. So due to all of the issues that were found, you know, not 397 00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:52,760 only with our own satellite not communicating, but with other satellites in our deployment 398 00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:58,680 not communicating, it took us quite a while to actually confirm our TLE. And during that 399 00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:02,120 process, it was really important for us to communicate with all of the other CubeSat 400 00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:06,880 teams that deployed satellites to understand who had actually made contact with theirs, 401 00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:12,880 and which TLEs had not yet been identified. And I think that email thread was actually 402 00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:18,520 initiated by one of the other CubeSat teams. They'd asked for points of contact for different 403 00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:25,080 universities to get in touch with them, and to start that kind of tracking thread. So 404 00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:28,760 I don't know if this is different now and more coordinated, but at least back when we 405 00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:34,520 deployed in 2020, this was not something that was initiated by, say, the launch integrator 406 00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:40,680 or other folks from NASA who were coordinating deployment. Now, I don't want to tell the 407 00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:45,160 story to make people nervous about operations for CubeSats or feel like this whole process 408 00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:51,640 is not as coordinated or as robust as it should be. It certainly was very different from what 409 00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:58,680 we expected. It was not something we predicted and not something we planned for as a result. 410 00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:06,280 But in looking back through some of my old information and emails on this topic, I think 411 00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:12,760 the TLE identification for our particular batch of CubeSats was much harder than it 412 00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:19,800 typically is for CubeSats being deployed. And I think this was really just due to the number 413 00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:25,000 of issues that people had experienced in making contact with their spacecraft. People did remark 414 00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:31,640 to us that it does not usually take several weeks to confirm the TLEs of all of the satellites 415 00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:40,680 from a typical like NANORAC deployment. So I think this was a bit more of an anomalous situation. 416 00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:46,840 So I hope that doesn't sway anyone from getting excited about operations as well. There's just 417 00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:53,880 a lot of really excellent work that goes into this kind of TLE identification just for maintaining 418 00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:58,360 space traffic management and really trying to help you make contact with your satellite 419 00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:06,840 after it's deployed. So I wanted to sort of set this stage right with addition to the story and 420 00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:13,640 just make sure that none of that work is underscored or that this came off in a wrong way. 421 00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:18,440 Ultimately, doing this whole process to confirm the position and health of each satellite in a 422 00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:24,040 constellation requires a lot of careful planning and execution. It can be difficult to do manually. 423 00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:29,640 It's very time consuming to do manually. And the ability for planets, mega health application to 424 00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:35,240 just cycle through all of that information quickly to identify any issues with the satellites is 425 00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:41,400 just incredibly enabling when it comes to early operations for large constellations of satellites. 426 00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:46,600 So anyway, that's what I was really trying to relay and explore a little bit through this part 427 00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:53,000 of the conversation. But in sort of post-editing, I didn't really feel like I executed it quite well 428 00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:58,840 and certainly not in the way that I had intended to do. So hopefully this, you know, addendum kind 429 00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:05,560 of shed some light on the experience that we had, operations in general, and what issues you might 430 00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:12,920 see and should plan for. And so with that tiny story out of the way, let's get back to the episode. 431 00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:26,680 Okay. I, to make sure we have time for it, I want to ask more about like looking back 432 00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:32,040 on how planet has developed over the years, given that the company has been launching satellites for 433 00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:38,040 over 10 years and you've been at the company for, you know, basically for kind of the whole. 434 00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:47,560 Almost. Yeah. Yeah. A little over nine years ago. And when I joined, there already around, 435 00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:59,320 I think just about to break 100 people. So, yeah, we had, you know, teams already kind of established, 436 00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:06,280 even if a team was just one or two people. But I think there was already like a good group of folks 437 00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:14,440 up in it. I guess within your time at Planet, what are a few things that you've, you know, admired 438 00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:23,480 about, you know, maybe the company and what you guys do just having seen it grow so much over time? 439 00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:36,120 Yeah, that's a great question. In terms of admired, I think a big part of why I've loved my job is 440 00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:44,360 because of the people I've gotten to work with and work for. I think, you know, like many companies, 441 00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:51,560 the culture is really dictated more on like a micro level. There's a company wide culture, but 442 00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:58,360 I think the things that impact you more on a day to day basis is like your relationship with your 443 00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:04,520 manager and your manager's manager and the team members that you work with. And maybe it's just 444 00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:11,400 because of the nature of our work, but there's always, it's always been really valuable to me, 445 00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:19,800 like the level of trust that our team has with one another. And what I admire about like 446 00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:29,960 Planet's journey over the years, I would say is we've really tried to be introspective and 447 00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:40,200 retrospective along the way and to not make like the same mistakes over and over again. 448 00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:49,320 That's not to say we haven't. Like we're still, you know, kind of repeating things that may 449 00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:55,640 be like, oh, we could have avoided that we knew better. But I think we do actively try to 450 00:43:55,640 --> 00:44:07,160 learn from what we've done before, both technically, but also like culturally. So looking back over the 451 00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:15,400 nine years I've been at Planet, I can almost see like eras or like phases that we've been in, 452 00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:24,280 depending on who is in leadership or how mature our product was, you know, what companies were, 453 00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:30,120 did we like recently acquire and we're like working through the kinks of, you know, that transition, 454 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:37,880 what satellites were we flying, because we've already had, you know, we retired rapid-eye 455 00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:44,360 satellites several years back and that was through the acquisition of Blackbridge and then, 456 00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:50,600 you know, evolving Doves to Super Doves, like that was a big leap for us. So, 457 00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:58,760 yeah, it's been fun to look back and see like the different phases of at least the technological 458 00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:07,080 roadmap and then also how the company has gone from private to public and handling that rapid 459 00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:08,360 growth as well. 460 00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:21,160 No, I definitely agree with like, nope, had I thought lost it. No, I think that's awesome and 461 00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:27,160 especially like sort of going back to, you know, working with different people over 462 00:45:27,720 --> 00:45:33,240 different time periods and just kind of seeing how it evolves. That's just really cool. 463 00:45:33,240 --> 00:45:40,120 I don't know. I feel like when I look back on like long projects, it like, things just feel 464 00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:46,520 very long, but it also feels like the right things happened at the right time, you know, 465 00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:53,160 like stars aligned or something to where it just things fell into place nicely and they like, 466 00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:59,160 and then when you think about it more, it's like it, it was building up to that for a while. 467 00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:03,160 It, I don't know, it just wasn't like always apparent or something, but. 468 00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:07,560 Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's, it's a little, it's up and down, right? Like, 469 00:46:08,440 --> 00:46:16,520 sometimes you feel like you're kind of in the bottom part of the sinusoidal graph and 470 00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:22,120 it can only get better from here. And, you know, the company has had to make a couple 471 00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:27,720 course corrections over the years where we, you know, we've been doing a lot of research 472 00:46:27,720 --> 00:46:36,120 and we, you know, unfortunately had layoffs or had to do like big pivots to realign ourselves 473 00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:44,920 with the business strategy. And those are, those are tough periods for sure. But then immediately 474 00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:55,480 following is really like, I think periods of us rallying and getting much clearer direction 475 00:46:55,480 --> 00:47:06,920 on where our priorities are and are able to really forge ahead after that. So I've definitely felt 476 00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:17,560 those like those lulls and highs along the way and appreciate that I've been around to be able 477 00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:23,880 to see them really and to celebrate the successes that we've had. Maybe as one final question before 478 00:47:23,880 --> 00:47:30,440 we have to sign off, are there, well, maybe this is too big of a question. So I apologize. 479 00:47:31,240 --> 00:47:37,960 But I think one thing I did want to ask was like, you know, are there sort of general, 480 00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:47,560 not principles, but, you know, either other tasks, things people have to consider 481 00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:55,880 or issues that aren't just, aren't very well communicated with, you know, having to manage 482 00:47:56,440 --> 00:48:04,200 large constellations that, you know, like if you were to give advice to people who, you know, 483 00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:09,000 maybe wanted to start a company with large constellations of satellites, like that they 484 00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:12,920 should know about but aren't really widely communicated, I guess. 485 00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:20,200 You know, I think for us, we've really benefited by knowing from the get go that 486 00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:32,520 we would need to operate a large number of satellites, a scaled fleet with a small number of 487 00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:43,400 people. Like our operations team would not be scaling at the rate of our fleet and knowing 488 00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:51,960 that from the get go, like you don't waste any time automating things out or really thinking through 489 00:48:51,960 --> 00:49:03,800 your risk posture and what the satellite needs to be able to handle autonomously versus 490 00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:12,360 something that just needs to be commanded from the ground and having controls for operators to 491 00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:22,680 really advance that con ops, right? So allowing operators to have the ability to configure things 492 00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:28,600 on a per se basis because they're all going to be special even though they're all the same. 493 00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:36,920 They will find ways to be special and operators will need to account for that. So making sure 494 00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:42,680 making sure your tooling enables them to manage all of those idiosyncrasies. 495 00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:51,400 Yeah, and I think especially as these mega constellations 496 00:49:52,680 --> 00:50:02,680 common board that are like 10x of what we have, it's really being good space neighbors and sharing 497 00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:13,160 as much information as you can with one another about your conjunction management strategies and 498 00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:24,680 your processes, workflows and where your thresholds are. It's something we're continuing to try and 499 00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:35,880 be better about and helping to standardize good practices if possible. There's a lot of companies 500 00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:41,480 and a lot of people that care a lot about this as they should because it's something we need to take 501 00:50:41,480 --> 00:50:50,600 really seriously. And that's part of why our small sat common bus has propulsion on board 502 00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:59,000 because it just further allows us to have more control authority and the ability to maneuver if 503 00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:08,200 we need to for conjunction avoidance. So yeah, that's something to definitely build into your 504 00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:14,520 overall mission design is how you're going to manage that. I think that's a perfect note to end 505 00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:21,640 the chat on before as we're reaching the top of the hour here. So yeah, no, this was super fun. 506 00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:29,800 I really admire Planet and it was great to just hear more about how you guys operate from a 507 00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:37,160 day-to-day standpoint and even just reading all the papers. It was fascinating to understand 508 00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:41,720 all the things that you guys had to think about and the tools that actually make what you're doing 509 00:51:41,720 --> 00:51:49,720 possible essentially. So yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Oh my gosh, I really appreciate 510 00:51:49,720 --> 00:51:56,840 you reaching out and really doing all the research ahead of time. I mean, that's a lot and if you're 511 00:51:56,840 --> 00:52:04,280 ever in the Bay Area, let us know. I would love that. I would geek out very hard. So anytime. 512 00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:05,400 Anytime. 513 00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,080 Thank you all for tuning into this week's episode of the Art of Space Engineering. If you want to 514 00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:19,080 learn more about Planet Labs, you can visit their website at planet.com. If you're interested in 515 00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:23,080 learning more about the mission operations at Planet and how this is automated, links to the 516 00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:27,480 key papers that we were discussing are linked in the show notes as well. You can find other resources 517 00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:32,280 by searching for Planet Labs in the Smallsat conference database. That's my goal to make the 518 00:52:32,280 --> 00:52:36,760 content on this podcast as wide ranging and focused on processes that are useful to engineers, 519 00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:41,480 both young and experienced. And that being said, if you have any questions, comments, or ideas for 520 00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:45,880 future episodes, please feel free to connect with me via email or LinkedIn and you can find resources 521 00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:49,800 for both of those in the podcast description. And if you've been enjoying this podcast and you 522 00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:53,240 want to support it, please share these episodes with your friends who might be interested in them. 523 00:52:53,240 --> 00:52:57,160 And don't forget to follow this on your favorite podcast source to get notifications on upcoming 524 00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:03,160 episodes. Here's looking forward to future adventures and the lessons learned from them. Cheers, Sarah. 525 00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:09,800 Now, since this interview was limited in time, there were a few tools and general facts about 526 00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,120 the way that Planet manages operations that we didn't quite get to discuss here, but that I 527 00:53:14,120 --> 00:53:17,960 wanted to include for the reference that needs to be described in detail in a few of the papers 528 00:53:17,960 --> 00:53:22,360 that I linked in the show notes. So a key resource in scheduling is the Contact Allocator and 529 00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:27,880 Schedule Optimizer tools. The Contact Allocator runs alongside of schedule optimizers to distribute 530 00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:32,840 contacts amongst all of the ground stations. The tool signs a priority to each satellite and then 531 00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:37,640 uses this to assess the right cadence of ground station passes. This also runs every few minutes 532 00:53:37,640 --> 00:53:43,400 to react to any short-term changes in a satellite state of health. So for example, image downlinks 533 00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:47,960 are given a very high priority, but if anomalies occur, then the tool ensures additional passes 534 00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:54,200 are scheduled to assist in troubleshooting and resolving the anomaly, and that anomaly management 535 00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:59,560 is handled a bit more manually by the operator. Speaking of anomaly monitoring, papers also 536 00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:05,240 discuss their tool called Autobot, which monitors a four anomalous situation such as the bus voltage, 537 00:54:05,240 --> 00:54:10,040 unexpected tumbling, and the terms of the satellite needs to be placed into a safe mode, 538 00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:14,680 which is then autonomously scheduled and handled more manually by the spacecraft operator. 539 00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:20,520 In addition, a tool called Sequencer was developed to help with automating the ADCS calibration, 540 00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:25,560 which is previously very manual. And this autonomously takes the satellite through 541 00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:30,200 different types of maneuvers and then checks that the Adarchy Control System handled them 542 00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:35,160 in the right way. And so this allows the team to assess any issues with, you know, 543 00:54:35,160 --> 00:54:40,040 maybe software or hardware that has happened on orbit and just make sure that the satellite can 544 00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:46,040 perform all the maneuvers that it needs to to support imaging. With all of these automated 545 00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:51,560 processes in place, commissioning a fleet of 40 spacecraft takes, you know, essentially two weeks 546 00:54:51,560 --> 00:54:58,520 time and can be done effectively and safely compared to having to take well over a month. 547 00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:03,080 And so, you know, I think this really just speaks to a lot of the very hard work and dedication 548 00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:09,640 that has come out of the team at Planet to just be able to actually perform all of this for large 549 00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:15,080 constellations. So I think that's very cool. I just wanted to make sure that all of that got in there 550 00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:40,520 in addition to what Deanna and I were able to talk about.