I am hearing a LOT of buzz 🐝 since May 7th about the acquisition of Esri Imagery Partner, Capella Space Corp. Capella is an American space tech company with data and satellite solutions for government and commercial use. Capella was the first U.S. company with a commercial constellation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, delivering sub-meter pixel resolution.
According to IonQ, this acquisition will support their larger plan to create the world’s first space-based quantum key distribution (QKD) network — a technology that promises "unhackable" communications for government and commercial users. Click HERE to read about Quantum Based computing on Wikipedia.
The question is, why would a quantum computing hardware company by a commercial data provider? According to most people, its to help them move into the defense and intelligence markets. I think the high resolution Capella data makes it well suited for GeoAI training and model generation. Maybe the QPUs will enable on-board processing for the Capella constellation. Wouldn't that be cool!?!
Want to learn more about working with Capella data in ArcGIS? Read the blog post, "Demystifying SAR Satellite Data in ArcGIS" by Elizabeth Menezes.
Stephanie C. Dockstader | Imagery & Remote Sensing
