Signed, Sealed, Delivered

This image of the inside panel of SkySat-2 shows the signatures of all Skybox Imaging employees including the company dog, Ruby. The satellite, which launched in early July and is now zipping around the Earth at seven kilometers per second, is the second in the company’s planned fleet of 24 high-resolution SmallSats.

Skybox Imaging was founded in 2009 by four Stanford University graduate students and has since grown to more than 125 aerospace engineers and data scientists. The company was recently ranked No. 14 on the 2014 CNBC Disruptor 50 List and named Inc. magazine’s No. 1 Most Audacious Tech Company—both with good reason.

Not only does the start-up represent a paradigm shift for the GEOINT Community—which has traditionally relied upon larger, more expensive and complex satellites—but its founders hope to change the way businesses make decisions as well as the way people view the world. However, Skybox views its core business as providing information services, not building satellites. Its focus is on the valuable insight hidden in high-resolution images and videos.

On Aug. 1, Google acquired Skybox Imaging for a reported price of $500 million, with the intent of adding Skybox’s high-quality, real-time imagery and video to its Google Earth and Google Maps services.