Planet Labs, Inc.

Founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, Planet Labs has been among the forefront of several companies seeking to provide high-quality, commercially available imagery of planet Earth. As such, it has the capability to look all around the world, in real time.

In January, a senior data visualization engineer at the company began to survey the damage from mudslides in Southern California. As Robert Simmon looked at the area, which had been ravaged first by wildfires and then large debris flows, he realized he could not see all that much definition between the flat, coastal area and the nearby San Rafael and Santa Ynez mountain ranges. “The entire sense of mountain terrain was lost,” Simmon told Ars.