Alba Orbital & Trade in Space to use ‘Night-time’ satellite imagery to produce transactional insights in agricultural trading

TRADE IN SPACE SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH FELLOW SCOTTISH SPACE FIRM, ALBA ORBITAL, TO PROCURE HIGH RESOLUTION ‘NIGHT-LIGHTS’ SATELLITE IMAGERY

Glasgow, Scotland 13th June 2022 - Scottish Space firms, Alba Orbital and Trade In Space, today have announced a partnership that would see the utilisation of optical imagery for the purpose of identifying crop farms, an area of choice stipulated by Trade In Space. Using image analytics, Trade In Space seeks to broker commercial purchase of coffee beans and cacao using secure blockchain applications.

Trade in Space, founded in 2017, are a newspace company integrating geospatial analysis, such as deforestation or land use classification into distributed ledger technology to make agricultural supply chains more profitable, ethical and sustainable.

As of May 2022, Alba Orbital has launched 23 satellites to date. The Glasgow based team led by Tom Walkinshaw has been rapidly developing its “Night Light” constellations with two consecutive launches achieved within the 1st half of 2022. Alba Orbital has onboarded an extensive suite of clients for their night-time satellite imagery service, including an undisclosed government organisation and McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS). 

Night light data refers to visible lights emanating from the earth that is captured by satellites from outer space. The data, which provides a numerical measure of brightness of the earth during the night, can provide vital insights into natural disasters, economic activity, socioeconomic trends, and even the impact of COVID-19.

Alba Orbital’s new satellite constellation aims to provide to imagery of the earth at night which covers all 3 color spectrums (Red, Green and Blue) with spatial and temporal resolution compared to publicly available datasets such as VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) which lack these important features.

“We are delighted to have Robin and the Trade In Space team onboard our night-lights early access program” said Tom Walkinshaw, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Alba Orbital. “Our latest partnership with Trade In Space reflects a critical need from the commodities industry for innovative solutions from Space. Such crucial data sets provided by Alba Orbital empowers analytic firms such as Robins team to advance ethical transactions in the commodities industry.”

Robin Sampson, Founder of Trade In Space adds: “Trade in Space recognizes the value in producing analysis by using new forms of data from space. This is a huge part of our company philosophy, and of a wider internal drive to explore new ways of directly integrating earth observation imagery into our products. If successful, Alba’s approach could completely change the game in sourcing imagery from key areas where we need information, quickly, to monitor supply chain-risks”.

Alba Orbital has now completed three successful orbital launches and hosted a range of missions on behalf of Academic institutions, Startups and governmental clients alike. After raising a $3.4m seed round with the prestigious Y combinator program last year, Alba Orbital have scaled their launch and manufacturing processes with their targets set to launch every quarter and to provide near real time satellite imagery. 

If you are are interested in night-time satellite imagery or would like to learn more about the applications of this data, please get in touch with the Alba Orbital team at contact@albaorbital.com 🚀