Archives and the Value of History
What is a satellite imagery archive worth, and who pays for looking back in time?
Chapter summary
An archive is a time machine.
Key takeaways
- 1
It lets a buyer see what a place looked like before a disaster, a conflict or a construction project, which no new satellite can provide.
- 2
Landsat's archive since 1972 and Copernicus since 2014 are free; commercial archives (Vantor's 30 cm since the early 2000s, Planet's daily 3 m since about 2017, Airbus's SPOT and Pléiades) are sold.
- 3
Archives are bought for change analysis, legal evidence, insurance claims, environmental baselines and, increasingly, AI training.
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