Will Marshall

Activist, Concerned citizen, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Explorer, Idea generator, Inventor, Scientist, Technologist

Will Marshall is the Co-Founder and CEO of Planet. Planet is a purpose-driven startup that builds and operates fleets of compact, highly capable Earth-imaging satellites. Founded by NASA scientists, Planet today operates 156 satellites, the largest satellite constellation in history, including 149 medium resolution and 7 high resolution satellites. With this fleet, Planet has the capacity to image the entire Earth land mass every day. There are a wide range of humanitarian applications such as tracking deforestation, improving precision agriculture, water security, natural disaster relief efforts; as well as commercial applications such as consumer mapping, commodities tracking and news. Prior to Planet, Will was a Scientist at NASA/USRA where he developed a low-cost planetary bus, was Deputy System’s Engineer on lunar orbiter mission “LADEE”, a Science Team member for the lunar impactor mission “LCROSS”, served as Co-Principal Investigator on PhoneSat, and was the technical lead on research projects in space debris remediation. Will has published over 30 articles in scientific publications including Science magazine and he has written a variety of space related op-eds including in the New York Times and Boston Globe. Will received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oxford and his Masters in Physics with Space Science and Technology from the University of Leicester. Will was a Postdoctoral Fellow at George Washington University and Harvard University. Learn more about Will and Planet at www.planet.com and follow him and our Twitter for updates at @wsm1 and @PlanetLabs.

Astronomy, Math and Physics, Philosophy, space, Space Debris

Gave this talk at TED 2014: www.ted.com/talks/will_marshall_teeny_tiny_satellites_that_photograph_the_entire_planet_every_day