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“Sovereignty” is probably the most overused term in the Earth observation sector today. According to TerraWatch analysis, we track at least 76 governments that have either announced or have ongoing activities related to deploying their sovereign EO solutions. But how sovereign is sovereign? Some countries are buying dedicated satellites from companies that deliver them in less than a year, some countries are reserving exclusive capacity on commercial EO satellites and others are commissioning fully nationally built and owned constellations. But all of these are called "sovereign." A better way to think about sovereignty is perhaps as a stack of control points across the EO value chain. So, I recently came up with 10 layers of sovereignty that go all the way from one end to the other. 1. Industrial sovereignty 2. Deployment sovereignty 3. Asset sovereignty 4. Operations sovereignty 5. Collection sovereignty 6. Access sovereignty 7. Data sovereignty 8. Processing sovereignty 9. AI model sovereignty 10. Application sovereignty In the latest edition of the @terrawatchspace Pro newsletter, I detailed the 10 layers of EO sovereignty, analysed whether any EO system can be fully sovereign, discussed the differences between sovereignty and autarky and what the future of EO sovereignty would look like.

Just had a look at the manifest for Transporter-18 and as has always been the case, Earth observation satellites lead the pack. Out of the 130 satellites launching later today, at least 65 (~50%) are EO satellites across optical, SAR, RF, AIS, hyperspectral, sounder, thermal...

According to @terrawatchspace analysis, on average about 53 % of all payloads launched on SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions are EO satellites. So, if you were wondering which segment of the space industry is going to be affected the most with the Falcon 9 phasing out 👇

Sovereignty is perhaps of the one of the more paradoxical ideas in Earth observation today: One, because it is an industry that basically runs on an open-source software stack - most EO products or EO-derived solutions uses/runs on Python, R, GDAL, Xarray, PyTorch, Zarr, GeoPandas, Leaflet, QGIS, Pangeo, STAC etc. These libraries and tools are built and maintained by a truly global community - one can 'sovereignize' where the infrastructure runs, but not the community that is building and continuously improving the technology underneath it. Two, because a truly global EO solution requires global cooperation and collaboration among public, private and research community to advance across the value chain - from standards for data acquisition, management and processing to calibration/validation and training data collected across geographies and shared through common global frameworks. I know that we are going through an unprecedented time geopolitically and it requires every government, company and organisation to look inward. But the mistake, from an EO perspective, is to confuse sovereignty (control) with autarky (self-sufficiency). EO is global by nature, and some of the infrastructure that makes sovereign EO capabilities possible is itself built through planetary-scale systems and communities that are transcend national boundaries.

Google’s WeatherNext 3 is currently the best-performing global AI weather model, according to independent evaluation from Brightband. But why is Google investing so heavily in weather? I think there are two reasons: 1. Making existing Google products more valuable The first reason is quite straightforward - more accurate global weather forecasts make Google’s existing products more valuable and differentiated: improve the Search and Gemini experience, make Maps more useful and improve services that companies already pay Google to use in their own applications. So, unlike traditional weather companies that monetise weather by developing separate products, Google is unlikely to make money from the forecast itself. Weather can simply make the products and services it already owns more useful. 2. Platformization of weather The second reason is more interesting for me: making weather part of the cloud infrastructure itself (which I call platformization). WeatherNext forecasts are already available through BigQuery, Earth Engine and Cloud Storage, which means developers and enterprises can increasingly treat weather like another programmable dataset rather than a separate product. If forecasts are available on demand, customisable and embedded into the same infrastructure companies already use, users can start building around them: alerts, simulations, pricing, optimisation and planning (think energy, insurance, agriculture, logistics etc.). So, Google is not necessarily trying to become a weather company. It is trying to make weather not just a product user buys but a sticky service layer they build on top of, integrate with and ultimately depend on for their business. --- TL;DR: Google's strategy is to make weather intelligence valuable by improving its own products while also making weather as an infrastructure that others can build on.

So I have been thinking about a simplified way to describe what @terrawatchspace is and what we actually do - here's what I have come up with: TerraWatch helps you think better about Earth observation and we do so in 3 ways: 1. Newsletter = one-to-many thinking: Publish independent analysis and insights on EO markets, applications, policy and adoption 2. Advisory = one-to-one thinking: Work directly with governments, EO companies, startups, enterprises and investors on specific strategic, market and policy questions related to EO 3. Events (like EO Summit) = many-to-many thinking: Bring together the EO ecosystem and users across industries to exchange perspectives on EO market evolution, applications and adoption Three different but connected activities, but ultimately the same goal: helping people make sense of EO and what EO means for them 🛰️ 🌍

Embeddings is the new buzzword in Earth observation - several folks outside the EO bubble kept asking me for a simple explanation. So, we took a stab at helping demystify what EO embeddings are, how they work and why they are useful. This infographic is part of the latest @terrawatchspace deep-dive on EO foundation models & embeddings, how they are commercialised and what they mean for the future of the EO market. Full access for Premium subscribers and free preview for all (linked in comments).

The recently concluded Space Summit in Paris included two declarations on Earth observation - obviously, both got very little attention given that EO is always taken for granted and nobody cares until we have a problem. The two declarations are actually interesting- the first one set out the principles for space-based scientific including accessibility, openness, integrity and international cooperation. The second called the Copernicus programme a global public good and confirmed the need for its continuity. But does this move us closer to the global EO political governance framework that I have argued is missing? What can we learn from which countries signed these declarations, and which ones did not? In my new essay, I look at what the two declarations actually say, what they leave out, and whether a framework for open EO data can work even if it is not global.

New @terrawatchspace deep dive on Earth Observation Foundation Models (EOFMs) - an in-depth report on what they are and how they will change the EO market with several infographics. The piece covers a bunch of topics including: - What EOFMs and embeddings are (an attempt at demystifying them) - The three ways EOFMs are commercialised in EO - Which use cases are a good fit for EOFMs - How EOFMs could change the EO value chain - The EOFMs market landscape - How EOFMs will change the EO market and more.

Earth observation is such a fascinating sector work in because it is three things at once - a strategic asset focused on sovereignty, an enterprise market with scaling revenues and a public good focusing on open access and research (somewhat similar to the ongoing discussions with respect to AI). In reality, EO cannot and should not just be one of the three, but as we are currently seeing the market (and geopolitics) evolve, we are also asking ourselves if it can really be all three, properly. In this week's @terrawatchspace Pro newsletter, I laid out some thoughts on this concept - focusing on how essentially this amazing multi-purpose technology is going through an operational identity crisis now as the world around it changes. More to come on this from me!

It was a pleasure for @terrawatchspace to contribute to this Copernicus programme evaluation report along with colleagues at knowspace and Frontier Economics, assessing the impacts for UK after they rejoined Copernicus programme in 2024 after leaving in 2021. Participating in Copernicus is a long-term strategic decision for any country. While contract returns are modest for the UK (mainly due to the disruption after leaving), being a part of the programme is critical for UK's EO sector. Data from Copernicus missions is already deeply embedded in UK public services, climate research, and AI model development. There is also a common misconception that since “Copernicus data is free”, membership is not valuable. But as our report shows, being a Copernicus member provides various benefits: fewer download and access restrictions, archives, calibration and validation, crisis services, Contributing Missions data, and influence over future data capture. This is an interim report - it is still too early to judge the industrial return for the UK from rejoining Copernicus, but being in Copernicus ensures the UK remains a key player in the global EO sector and guarantees access to unmatched EO data.

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Commercial weather satellites have been around for more than a decade, but the market has been slow to develop. Since 2016, NOAA has awarded over $180M in contracts to procure data from weather satellite companies such as Tomorrow.io, Spire, PlanetiQ, Weather Stream, Muon Space etc. Yet, reliable, recurring demand for satellite-based weather data never materialised. But, all that could change with NOAA's planned $2.3B contract vehicle for data buys over the next decade, For weather satellite companies, that could finally provide the recurring government anchor the sector has lacked. So, does this segment now become a much bigger market? The answer may not be straightforward. Satellite-based weather is an unusual market because weather observations are treated as a public good: under the WMO Unified Data Policy, NOAA requires open licensing and broad redistribution rights for the commercial data it purchases (something I broadly agree with). So, in other words, NOAA is creating a market by becoming a major buyer of commercial data, while simultaneously limiting suppliers’ ability to sell the same data elsewhere. In this week's @terrawatchspace Pro newsletter, I discuss how NOAA's procurement has evolved from radio occultation to other sensors, why weather is an unusual market, how AI weather models could change the equation and the potential impacts NOAA's new multi-billion $ program.