Economic security

HOW SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE IS HELPING TO PREDICT STOCK PRICES

Space, far from being the final frontier, may turn out to be the key to unlocking unknown insight about planet Earth. That's the hope of Orbital Insight, a U.S. firm monitoring the globe using a mixture of machine learning and satellite-enhanced geo-analytics.

From retail traffic levels to agriculture to poverty mapping, the up-and-coming Californian company is taking a scientific approach to data by partnering with satellite firms to blast rockets into space and watch key industrial changes from the black sky above.

By 2020, there will be enough satellites in space to take real-time surveillance of the entire world, said AJ DeRosa, an Orbital Insight executive during Newsweek's AI and Data Science conference in London on March 1. "Yes, Skynet is here," he laughed.