Don Osborne, CEO of EarthDaily, was traveling to a conference in Colorado when the company’s six newest satellites successfully reached low Earth orbit (LEO) onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission earlier this month.
“The launch itself didn’t worry me much,” he explains. “The real work starts the moment they’re released. You need to track each unit, establish communication, orient them properly, and activate them one at a time. That’s when the pressure really builds.”
As more businesses deploy LEO satellite constellations, EarthDaily is among those taking advantage of the growing availability of rideshare launches, mainly from SpaceX and Blue Origin. However, Osborne is quick to point out that the real complexity begins once the satellites are in orbit.
“It’s not an exact comparison, but think of it like coming home and turning on the lights room by room,” he says. “Since the sensors are extremely delicate, a misaligned satellite pointing at the sun could be ruined—similar to staring at an eclipse. So, you have to stabilize each spacecraft, point it in the correct direction, and then bring each system online step by step, verifying everything along the way.”
The team is currently finishing calibration and commissioning before commercial services are set to begin later this summer.
EarthDaily is also joining a wave of satellite data providers using LEO constellations to enhance IoT systems with real-time Earth observation and geospatial insights.
According to Osborne, this growing network of Earth observation satellites means farmers, weather forecasters, and military organizations are now looking to merge orbital and ground data into more unified analytical platforms using IoT and satellite feeds.
“Previously, the approach was based on snapshots,” he says. “Today, we’re seeing more frequent, consistent measurements on a planetary scale—which is what allows IoT systems to evolve from local problem-solving toward broader, globally aware intelligence.”
The EarthDaily Constellation, made up of the six newly launched satellites plus a test unit deployed in 2025, is built to capture daily, uniform global observations through 16 imaging systems across 22 spectral bands. Instead of targeting ultra-high-resolution images of small areas, it’s designed for wide-scale change detection, producing standardized datasets suited for AI and predictive modeling.
Osborne emphasizes that this precision makes the system especially valuable to IoT networks in agriculture, logistics, insurance, and infrastructure monitoring, where it provides contextual support rather than primary data sensing.
“IoT gives you granular, localized information—from individual machines, fields, and assets,” he says. “Satellite systems offer the broader context. Combining both results in a much clearer operational overview.”
He notes that this blending is beginning to transform industrial IoT frameworks, particularly in agriculture, where satellite-based change detection is increasingly used alongside ground sensors to refine and validate data interpretation.
“For example, in agriculture, you’re not just placing sensors in fields and on equipment anymore,” he says. “You’re designing systems that incorporate satellite-detected changes as an additional input, helping you better verify and understand what your IoT devices are collecting.”
EarthDaily is one of several companies expanding LEO Earth observation capabilities, alongside providers focused on daily revisit imaging, climate monitoring, defense intelligence, and geospatial analysis. The company offers both raw geospatial data and processed insights to its clients.
Osborne argues that these constellations are collectively reducing delays and improving the reliability of global environmental data—a long-standing challenge for IoT applications that depend on up-to-date contextual information.
“If your external environmental data is weeks old, optimizing IoT systems isn’t possible,” he says. “LEO constellations are shrinking that gap to hours or days, fundamentally changing how businesses approach forecasting and real-time decision-making.”
The company is presenting its platform as a rigorously calibrated measurement system, not just a standard imaging service, with each satellite contributing to a single, AI-ready dataset intended for foundation model training and predictive analytics.
Osborne highlights that this transition is especially important as IoT moves toward predictive—and sometimes automated—decision-making, although he acknowledges adoption varies significantly across sectors.
“The industry is progressing from monitoring current conditions to anticipating future outcomes,” he explains. “This is only achievable with consistent, global-scale data that can be integrated with IoT device inputs.”
He cites agriculture as an early success story, where satellite-detected indicators like crop stress, moisture fluctuations, and disease spread can be merged with ground-level IoT data from machinery and field sensors to enhance yield predictions and resource management.
Once fully operational, EarthDaily expects its constellation to generate roughly 100 terabytes of data daily—a scale Osborne says is now economically feasible thanks to advances in cloud computing and machine learning infrastructure.
“Just a decade ago, this would have been technically and financially impractical,” he notes. “Now, it’s forming the basis for entirely new industrial processes.”
With an eighth satellite planned for launch later this summer, EarthDaily is steadily expanding its LEO presence, aligned with what Osborne sees as a broader industry movement still in its early stages.
“We’re at the start of a fundamental transformation,” he states. “LEO constellations are converting Earth observation into a continuous, real-time layer for IoT systems, and we’re only beginning to grasp the possibilities this creates.”
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