Payload 3/15/22 Newsletter

Good morning. Notice anything different up top today? 

On a separate note, Payload will be attending the SATELLITE Conference next week in Washington. Shoot us a note if you'll be there and would like to meet up. Reach out to Ari for all things business and partnerships, or Ryan for all things editorial.  

In today's edition: 🤖 Synthetaic Series A🤠 USSF x SXSW 🧑‍🚀 NS-20🔃 On the move

“Geospatial Was Our First Love” 

AI startup Synthetaic has closed a $13M Series A, the Wisconsin company announced this morning. Lupa Systems led the round, with TitleTown Tech, Betaworks, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Esri also participating. 

The company plans to tap its fresh funds to continue recruiting top technical talent and also expand its sales team, Synthetaic CEO Corey Jaskolski tells Payload. 

The data problem: “To train high-performance AI right now, you need human hand-labeled data.” Jaskolski, an MIT-trained technologist with two decades of AI/machine learning experience, started Synthetaic after asking: “What if that wasn’t the case?” 

Synthetaic’s core tool: RAIC (Rapid Automatic Image Categorization), which helps automate annotation. Use cases include object detection, search, data labeling, and categorization.

• “Synthetaic introduces new technology that solves AI’s data problem by building models in minutes instead of months,” Jaskolski says. 

• The company says the tool will dramatically reduce the costs of development. It could also lower barriers to entry by enabling non-AI experts to quickly build and run detection models. 

A case study: “We took 60-centimeter data for all of California and Texas, a massive unlabeled data set. We clicked on a tile that contained a real image of a CAFO [concentrated animal feed operation]. Using RAIC we were able to identify all the CAFOs in Texas and California.” 

Hand-labeling data would have cost $1M+ and taken 3-6 months, Jaskolski says. 

+ Want more? Our full story goes deeper into AI’s data problem, RAIC’s technical underpinnings, and why geospatial and space-collected data were Synthetaic’s “first love.” We also demoed RAIC. Finally, we asked Jaskolski about raising a round in 2022 and whether his analytics tool could be put to use with satellite imagery from Ukraine.

Check out the full story here. 

USSF: More Than a Meme

On Sunday, Payload CEO Mo Islam hosted a SXSW panel—“Space Force: More than a Meme”—with a decorated bench of panelists: 

• Maj. Gen. Kim Crider (Ret.), head of Deloitte’s government and public services unit’s AI practice. Crider is also former CTO of USSF.

• Eric Fanning, CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association and 22nd secretary of the US Army.

• Dr. Bill Conley, SVP and CTO of Mercury Systems, formerly director of electronic warfare for the secretary of defense.

Here’s what the panelists had to say…

• On building an agency from scratch: “Space Force can really think very differently about who they appeal to and how they build their force,” said Fanning, adding that the newly created Space Force is “a great place to experiment.”

• On connecting with industry: “It’s a different kind of organization,” said Crider. “Space Force can’t do what it does without its industry partners.”

• On navigating current and potential conflicts: “Space is a global domain and there are global partners around the world that want to be able to use space, access space, and leverage space,” said Crider. When asked about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said the branch is “just following the guidance it has been given” so far.

Payload's takeaway: The USSF is still new. It needs time to develop a unique culture, and to convey to Americans why protecting US assets in space is so important. As the branch expands, partnerships with commercial space players will be vital. Panelists emphasized the need for a more streamlined procurement process to encourage those partnerships.

🔗 Read or share this story online 🔗

Life Imitates Art

Turns out the rumors were true. SNL’s Pete Davidson will be on Blue Origin’s next crewed suborbital space trip. Davidson will be joined by Marty Allen, married duo Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and Dr. George Nield on Blue’s NS-20 mission.

• Liftoff is scheduled for next Wednesday, March 23, at 8:30 am CT. 

• NS20 = New Shepard’s 20th overall launch and 4th human spaceflight. 

While Davidson’s presence on the manifest will dominate headlines, Nield is an especially noteworthy name within the space world. He is the former FAA lead for commercial space transportation, where he was responsible for licensing and regulating the US commercial launch sector. 

In Other News

• Right now: Astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron are performing a a spacewalk to upgrade one of the ISS's solar arrays.

• Astra (NASDAQ:ASTR) scrubbed a launch for Spaceflight Inc. from Kodiak, AK, due to weather conditions. The next launch window opens at 12:22 PM ET today.

• GOES-T executed its final engine burn and reached GEO orbit 22,236 miles above Earth. NOAA has renamed the satellite to GOES-18. 

• SpaceX celebrated its 20th bday on Monday.

• NASA says US astronaut Mark Vande Hei will return from the ISS on a Soyuz later this month as planned.

• Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) touched an all-time low in trading yesterday. The space tourism company’s stock, once a favorite among retail investors, is down 80% over the last year.  

The View from Reddit

In r/nasa, Redditor Rockoholic109 showed off a 60,000-piece “Lego shrine to Skylab.” Major kudos. Here’s the Flickr with more pics of Rockoholic109’s masterpiece. 

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