SAN FRANCISCO – A whole bunch of shoppers have signed up for a web based platform unveiled in early December by OurSky, a startup that recently raised $9.5 million to simplify tracking of objects in space.
OurSky was founded in 2022 by Daniel Roelker, former SpaceX vice chairman of software engineering, and Alex Hawkinson, founding father of home automation startup SmartThings and a distinguished astrophotographer. Los Angeles-based OurSky gathers data with a worldwide telescope network.
“We’re making the power to trace things in space just one other layer of the infrastructure,” Roelker told “Any space company can in a short time get the info they need to know their specific application in space.”
By easing access to such a data, OurSky intends decrease the price of developing space-related services.
“Most of the shoppers need the info, but they’re not space statement firms,” Roelker said. “The proven fact that they will use modern APIs to inform a longtime global network what information they need saves them time, money and investment.”
OurSky announced Dec. 6 the closing of its $9.5 million seed funding round led by Upfront Ventures and Venrex Investment Management. Oceans Ventures, Marlinspike Partners and Embedded Ventures participated within the round.
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Global Network
OurSky’s core network includes 30 telescopes at 10 global sites. As well as, OurSky pulls in data from 10 “extremely capable telescopes” owned by amateur astronomers, Hawkinson said. One other 15 to 25 telescopes tie into OurSky through Nighttime Imaging “N” Astronomy, or NINA, an astrophotography imaging suite.
“We’re enthusiastic about having the ability to leverage existing telescopes and infrastructure deployed world wide,” Roelker said. “There’s a really passionate amateur astronomy community with a whole bunch of 1000’s of scopes. We’re big believers in that style of global open-source movement for astronomy.”
Hawkinson added that many telescopes world wide are “underutilized” resulting from terrible astronomy software.
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Customer Base
OurSky was established to serve satellite operators, government agencies and insurance firms in addition to scientific and research organizations.
“We work with institutes and universities world wide that wish to collect various kinds of information from highly capable telescope networks,” Hawkinson said. “Sometimes universities have their very own telescopes. But plenty of times they need a telescope at a certain location to do something for a number of months. Having the ability to have access to a scope and data in a straightforward programmatic way helps to spur plenty of core research.”
Infrastructure Layer
Lately, firms have unveiled a wide range of services to streamline operations for presidency and business space operations. Roelker compares the trend to cloud, payment and other APIs that function infrastructure layers for terrestrial businesses.
“We’re eliminating plenty of that friction that it takes to go out of your idea to a practical space application,” Hawkinson said.
Applications for OurSky data include business and government space domain awareness, including space debris tracking.
“Those are obvious applications,” Roelker said. “And as Alex and I actually have each seen over our careers, whenever you open up access to data and a platform, you see novel applications developed that nobody ever thought of.”