Albedo launches first very low earth orbit satellite, promising drone-resolution imagery from space

the same time yeah and it was just intentional like I'm sure the truth was always in there somewhere anyway let's move on to Topher from albo Welcome to the stream wow that is a great background W the command center the command center and the command center congratulations thank you thank you excited uh yeah young company uh Incorporated in 2020 right and first satellites in orbit already and breaking news you got to update your Wikipedia page because on albo Space it says the company plans to launch its first satellite in 2025 that's old news old news yeah yeah hopefully someone updates that we need to figure out the Wikipedia thing yeah we started uh late 2020 and Y combinator winter 21 batch fantastic for got to start wow hard tech in in YC another narrative violation uh but but break it down for me like what does the satellite actually do uh and like where is the path I see on the wiki again plan to have a fleet of 24 spacecraft is that accurate are you thinking bigger and what happens when this constellation goes up yeah so so basically what we do or we we build satellites that fly super low in this new orbit called Belo very low earth orbit and so this first one they're pretty big they're like Walkin freezer size we just launched this first one on Friday as the cak topper on transporter 13 so like the big satellite up top got dropped off in Leo there epic drop off video of us getting like dropped off right over the Nile um so that super cool but the the kind of novelty that we're bringing is is building these satellites to operate in this very low orbit for an extended period of time and so then we can capture imagery or other things at at a resolution that today you can only get from planes or drones on the commercial side or from the national systems on the government side so it kind of is a breakthrough in terms of the data quality at low cost that we can capture from this new orbit where there's a lot of drag and and different things that have prevented people from building satellites that fly this low before but that's um that's what this first site will do and we'll get down there in about two months from Leo to voo so talk about just from when you started the company there there had been plenty of high-profile you know space oriented companies but it feels like I I just can imagine there was way less just excitement and interest even then when you were starting the company how how have kind of conversations even on the capital side shifted since then cuz I'm sure your inbox these days is is full of inbound uh but maybe wasn't always the case yeah definitely there's a lot more interest these days in in from the cap you know Capital allocation community on the National Security technology side and for us so the where we got the idea was actually in in president Trump's first Administration he tweeted this um classified satellite image basically Declassified it as the president people saw it they were like well this looks like 10 centimeters per pixel which is about the size of a coaster that you put your drink on must be from a billion dollar reconnaissance satellite would be amazing to have commercially because it could replace planes and drones for all these industrial applications that go through the Pains of flying those platforms today but it would cost a billion dollars even from Leo because you need a huge telescope and so that's what initially drove the idea for very low earth orbit at that time there was still say investors were still bullish on Earth observation as a whole today that is not generally the case uh it's been a tough market in terms of the capital that has gone in compared to what come out for us tapping into that commercial aircraft and drone Market which is just super fragmented and the value prop is pretty obvious if you can match that resolution from space you have Global coverage it's on demand you image spots much more frequently and it's much cheaper um and so the resolution is key there and then to to to the question on the National Security side there's this big shift right now to proliferated architectures because of counter space threats from our adversaries that make our big bespoke satellites very vulnerable and so what has historically uh prevented that in a lot of ways is the capability trade-off where if you proliferate and build way more satellites than a few big bespoke ones maybe the capability isn't as good in our case b Leo really unlocks these two things that have previously been mutually exclusive which is that Exquisite capability but at low cost so now you can spend that you know cost savings on proliferation which is much more resilient creates much more coverage and so yeah it's definitely a good time to be to be launching this first satellite first civilia with with the Tailwinds underway on the National Security side uh speaking of National Security when you see uh Espionage and Enterprise SAS does that keep you up at night your guys are obviously in a much more uh sort of critical uh industry in many ways SAS is important but also having sort of global visibility uh neck and neck really yeah neck and neck but um but yeah you know how do you think that uh you know H how seriously do you guys have to take security given that you're processing all this very sensitive data definitely seriously and we we not only from like a the data perspective but a lot of our technology is iar controlled and so that drives certain security levels we have a what they call a tier three license uh from the remote sensing regulatory body that means that we have additional kind of cybercity requirements and so that has driven us to yeah think think about the cyber security and and those sort of things um early on because we had to but yeah I mean given given what we're doing and the you know the more exposure we have now than we did years ago it's definitely uh yeah can you talk a little bit about the pros and cons of V Leo I mean I'm sure that you get you know higher resolution with smaller telescope uh I remember early on someone was telling me that you know oh imagine the Hubble telescope you know just turn it around and point it at Earth and that's probably what the Spy satellites look like and uh there's probably some benefits there but then you're also Fighting Gravity so do you have like crazy booster capability is that what you're optimizing for uh like just pros and cons of ILO yeah so the we would say actually the hardest part for our architecture in Vio is like the kind of Robotics Precision pointing control system technology that we need to build because the satellite's moving so fast and we have this big telescope and a tiny angle and so being able to collect a bunch of different areas make those images not blurry that is where really the hardest part is for any big space-based telescope but especially in beo but then there also is a lot of atmosphere there as well so we have a bunch of propulsion on board uh being heavy and having a slick area is pretty helpful for that and so like if you put I think historically a lot of people have looked at Vio with Cube sets and those just don't last like very long there because you can imagine like a bowling ball vers a feather ripping through the atmosphere and so we we pack a ton of mass in these pretty big satellites with solar rays covering everything because we keep them body mounted opposed to deploying out like traditional satellites which um which which hurt some of the power but then there's a bunch of like Atomic oxygen stuff there too and there's special Coatings and things that we do for that and to protect the Optics and and the solar race so there's a bun there's kind of like a bunch of different categories the most obvious one is drag that uh for us our average mission life will be about five years per satellite it's actually very dependent on the 11-year solar cycle um and the good thing about the drag though is it's a safe place to be so like from a space safety perspective there's concerns in Leo if Sally's break they're in orbit for you know 50 100 years but in in beo it's like a matter of weeks or days and so it's a not you know it's a sustainable place to be uh has running this company made you want to travel more or less I could imagine you just get an image of somewhere sometimes and you're like H been there feel like been there it looks like but I could also see it you see this place and you're like wow this looks Fant fantastic yeah there's no one else around I got to go baren Island I found not that you have time to travel but you know someday maybe yeah yeah have definitely gotten better at at my geography skills uh running this company for four years but I mean we we will start getting our first pictures in a couple months when we get too so that's really when we'll have H you know been there done that in terms of all the spots that we image and how do you think about the the the market size and the trade-off between commercial and government contracts I don't know how much you can talk about the government size but but there's like famous examples of you know satellite imagery being used to see how many cars are in the Walmart parking lot and some hedge funds saying oh Walmart's going to miss on earnings because they didn't have enough cars in the parking lot buying stuff and it's a proxy metric obviously hedge funds have a lot of cash they can pay for a lot of data it's maybe less cool than hey we're helping keep America safe but uh obviously it's a real market like you're running a business you got to sell to whoever you can um how are you thinking about it in the early stage for customers so this first satellite will operate solo for the first two years then we'll start depl more in 2027 and we have um pre we have this Reserve program because there's a finite amount of imagery capacity that we have and we've signed 22 customers on that and the the by far majority are commercial and it's a bread of different Industries like we have mining power lines agriculture uh mapping um uh natural gas pipelines like a lot of these different kind of industrial use cases and so we we see a huge opportunity there not because there's any precedent for it because like kind of like I was saying the Earth observation Market has not done as well as as it was hoped but from that aircraft and drone perspective and those proof points of those those contracts we have kind of strategically tried to cover a lot of those different applications so that for the first two years we can demonstrate the value across those and we've we've like completely sold out of our capacity over over the United States as well as a few other regions our allies as well are very interested in this level of Exquisite data and so that will be a big customer base for us and then from the kind of split with the National Security side um we have this you know not only this this Clarity satellite that we have but we've built the bus that we call Precision inhouse for the voo environment and it can host these very large payloads and so from a platform perspective and these kind of proliferated but Exquisite Mission sets that's where some of the the opportunity with the US government will be along with delivering data from our set but we also um you know see the need for these dedicated platforms and what vlo can bring to the table not only for just pictures but a lot of other things do you think the Dynamics of space have made you and the team better operators there's so much around you know just sort of these long term planning Horizons like startups traditionally are like we're just trying to do this as fast as possible we're going to ship we're going to iterate but like that just doesn't you can't it doesn't that you got to move fast but then you can't just you don't want to be breaking things it's expensive to get stuff up and then it sets you back years and that can be that can kill the company right so has that you know how's that impacted how you you know build have absolutely like learned a ton um as a first- Time founder the last four years and it's been an amazing journey we uh I I think the main way we've approached that is just by hiring more experienced Engineers than the average startup would and so that people know you know even whether they come from a new space or kind of a a tech uh world or like an OG Aerospace Prime World they know exactly what needs to be done from day one and so we've been able to move a lot faster via that while still with this level of you know these aren't Cube sets these are like very complex space robots basically with Precision Optics and crazy control systems and so we don't have the uh thousand satellite production line where we're like doing the on orbit testing constantly but we've spent more time testing on the ground and just kind of understanding you know the trade space from an architecture perspect perspective and I think that's helped us move faster even though it is a complex capability and especially the learnings we'll take from this first one and I mean that we the commissioning that we're doing right now we're like um I think like two weeks ahead of our internal schedule because you wouldn't expect to put up a Space robot and it just like it's not buggy and stuff you have to fix stuff and we've been our engineers in in here on the first day we're like is this actually the real data or is this simulated data because it's just kind of working and I think a lot of that is just smart design like really good planning and that's all kind of a result of the engineering team and the bias towards you know the the seasoned experienced folks on that side it's fantastic great answer well we'll let you get out of here soon last question how was DC DC was great um yeah I heard you were out there as well right uh yeah very the the podcast it's very important work we did uh manifest demo today which was awesome it was uh this event to kind of present to different military and intelligence potential customers and users and it was we had the big mockup on stage of the satellite so you could see it to scale we had just done a pass where we had sent some dark dark pixels through the payload sensor and um yeah yeah it was it was a great turn all the all the demos were honestly awesome like the the the guys that put on the event the everybody brought out it was it was pretty incredible to see all the tech yeah Mike's a killer he's awesome event uh anyway uh thanks so much for stopping by this is fantastic a lot we be back soon cheers I want to see some of those photos yeah where where are you sending it first Aman right you send it to the Aman and you and you zoom in so closely that you can read the capital allocators pitch deck that they have at the pool next to them and you can see what they're investing you talk about that good fundraising strategy right leave your deck yeah no just get a mole at every Amon have them print out the deck janitor the janitor and have just leave them around the property leave by the hot tub leave them by the pool yeah whoever your head of spying is just embed them at the Aman as a janitor let them let them kind of a 10 year game let them become the manager at Amiri and then you know and just sort of uh let let them become so embedded in the property uh and get the guests really trust them and say hey are you leading any series A's what's going on doing any term sheets this week boom boom all it takes is one trade to make back all those stuff bags of