Will Marshall

Sourcery · Google Is Putting AI Data Centers in Space. Planet Labs CEO…

• Why Does Persistence Matter More Than Timing for a Startup?

  Will Marshall says timing and a strong idea matter for a startup, and persistence matters more. Planet's team has stayed on a mission it sees as important for security, sustainability, and AI, including after investors said the plan was impossible because no one had launched that many satellites. That grit, and the aim of putting the tools to a useful purpose, is what he says keeps the company going.

  The staff record is the evidence he offers. On the 10th anniversary, seven of the first ten employees were still at Planet. At the 15th anniversary, about half of those first ten were still there. They could work elsewhere, he says, and they stay because the mission is worth it and the work is

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• What Is the Fermi Paradox?

  Will Marshall says the universe is remarkably silent, which is the Fermi paradox. His co-founder worked on NASA's TESS mission. Astronomers have found over 6,300 planets in the nearby galaxy, and none of them show an obvious sign of life. Enrico Fermi's question was why a universe that large has not produced a message.

  His expectation is a chemical hint of life off Earth within about six or seven years. He first put the horizon at ten years and has shortened it. Telescopes on the ground and the James Webb telescope can read an atmosphere the way Planet's Tanager satellites read the ground. Earth's air is about 20 percent oxygen. Oxygen binds to iron and to almost everything else, and it sta

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• Why Would AI Data Centers Be Cheaper in Space?

  Will Marshall says Planet Labs launched a test last week of Google's Project Suncatcher, hardware for a data center in orbit, after already flying NVIDIA chips on Pelican satellites. The near-term reason is speed. Processing a picture upstairs and sending down the answer is faster than downlinking the whole file. During the Los Angeles fires, Planet imaged the fire within a couple of hours, downlinked it a couple of hours later, and spent about another hour processing, so responders saw it several hours in. Compute in orbit is meant to cut that to minutes.

  Data centers are an energy problem, which is why he says they get cheaper in space. On the ground, solar panels are the cheapest watts,

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• How Does AI Let People Who Are Not Analysts Use Satellite Images?

  Will Marshall says the daily scan produces more imagery than almost anyone can use. NASA can work with it because it has about a thousand people who know how to analyze satellite data. A farmer in Kansas or a journalist in Kentucky cannot do much with 4 million images of 47 megapixels every day.

  AI is what lets someone ask a question in ordinary language and get an answer, and he expects that to multiply the number of users. Shrinking satellites so many of them can fly was, in his comparison, the move from a mainframe to a desktop. AI is the operating system that makes the desktop useful to people who are not specialists. Defense and intelligence can use it to watch large areas for threats.

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• What Is the Difference Between Dove, Pelican, and Tanager Satellites?

  Will Marshall says Planet Labs flies three kinds of imaging satellites, and each one answers a different question. Doves are the daily scan, the product he says no one else has. They cover Earth's land plus some ocean, about 200 million square kilometers, in eight spectral bands at three-meter resolution, sweeping automatically rather than waiting for a task.

  Pelicans are the high-resolution satellites customers point at a place. The aim is more revisits and faster delivery: ask for a picture of somewhere like Tahiti and get an analyzed image back in 30 minutes, from anywhere on the planet.

  Tanagers are hyperspectral. A human eye sees three colors. These satellites collect 420 narrow bands

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• How Did Planet Labs See Troops Build Up Before the Invasion of Ukraine?

  Will Marshall says Planet Labs imagery showed troops building up on the border of Ukraine before the full-scale invasion, and Ukraine still uses that data to watch threats before they reach the border. The edge he describes is information against a larger conventional force. Russia has more troops, tanks, missiles, and planes. Ukraine does not want to be invaded, and it has used drones, satellites, and AI to see earlier. He does not go into the operational details.

  Other governments asked for the same daily picture after watching that use. The US Navy monitors the South China Sea with it, about 13 million square kilometers of ocean, slightly larger than the United States, looking for illega

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• How Does Planet Labs Image the Entire Earth Every Day?

  Will Marshall says Planet Labs images the entire Earth every day by shrinking satellites from the size of a double-decker bus, automating how they are built, and launching many more of them at lower cost. The result is the first fleet that has ever done that.

  The work happens at a mass satellite manufacturing facility in the middle of San Francisco. The founding team had been at NASA Ames, just down the road near Mountain View, before moving into the city. Production there is far more automated, and the smaller satellites show up in the background of the factory tour. The first set grew to over 100 satellites, the first big-ish constellation. Starlink is a bigger constellation now.

  In the

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