Satellites, Light Pollution and Astronomy

Will Marshall is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planet.

Planet own and operate a fleet of (200+) satellites which image daily, the entire world.

Planet’s ultimate ambition is to achieve a queryable earth. 

The way you might ask Google what the population of Australia is, you’d be able to ask Planet any conceivable question you might have about the surface of the world. The way Google would refer to the Australian Bureau of Statistics for an answer to the countries population, Planet will refer your query to their data, millions and millions of indexed images of the planet’s surface to present you an answer.

The applications of this are huge.

Take economic intelligence as an example… all types of queries that could summon early indicators of movements that aren’t already priced in.

• For instance, as an early prediction of retail sales you could ask; How many cars are in Walmart parking lots across America right now? Or even, over the past 3 months, what’s the daily average number been?
• Which Chinese ports are seeing more or less traffic than they usually might since the 2026 Iran war began?

And then there’s uses for climate and the environment.

• I could ask, at what rate is a specific glacier retreating? Measure this season’s melt against each other year to date.
• Monitoring and acting upon overfishing in protected zones.
• Or as I ask Will in the interview, could Planet’s data be more accurate at early predictions regarding where an Australian bushfire season might be worst hit

You can imagine the applications for agriculture but as well, naturally, Planet’s data is also crucial for defence.

• Will comment’s on Planet’s data indicating very early the Russian buildup of activity closing in on a Ukraine border.
• And I caught Will just day’s after the 2026 war with Iran, a conflict where Planet’s data is also in use.

Will Marshall an incredible entrepreneur, but as you’ll see in the interview, he also has extensive interests beyond just those of his business.

Marshall’s PHD advisor was Sir Roger Penrose. He worked at NASA. He was on the team that discovered large quantities of water ice on the moon. He co-invented a space debris collision avoidance method using ground-based lasers. Will has lived in communal housing for 20 years. He’s a Brit abroad in America and is now the CEO of a company not only ambitioning for all the queryable stuff mentioned above, but as well is now partnered with both Google and Nvidia to explore the potential for data centres in space.

It’s a enormous pleasure to welcome to Will Marshall to the podcast.

Podcast Starter Packs

• Investigative Journalists
• Offshore Finance/Kleptocracy & Money Laundering
• Geopolitics/Economics/Economic Development
• Explorers & Adventurers

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