Satellite tasking remains one of the most complex, time-consuming operations within our industry. We recently looked at how UP42 tasking solves some of those challenges. You can pick and choose from our extensive tasking collections, place orders with complex AOIs, and track and download imagery into your pipeline with our STAC-compliant data management solution. All of this is on our platform, with minimal emails exchanged.
This week, we’re excited to announce a revamped tasking ordering flow on UP42. We’ve made it easier for you to quickly find the collections you need, upload complex AOIs, and get instant price estimates to make sure your budget constraints are met.
What challenge did we want to solve?
The lack of clarity on pricing remains a significant hurdle for tasking operations. Quite often, you need to place orders and wait until you get the feasibility study to get a quotation. This could take days or weeks on end, and can seriously disrupt your project and budget planning cycles.
As an added challenge, you’re often unsure which collection you should use for a particular project. What if your AOI consists of a bunch of different geometries of varying shapes? A lot of the current tasking process involves rule of thumb guesses and tedious conversations with satellite operators.
With our new ordering flow, you start with a complete list of all our different collections and their specifications.
You get a broad overview: different providers and the collections they offer, resolution, minimum order restrictions, and credits required for ordering.
Price estimates for better project planning
With this release, we aim to remove the uncertainties and guesswork in your project discovery and planning phases. Once you select your desired collections, you’re taken to the “Add Geometry” section. You can upload your AOIs in a single click.
If a particular AOI isn’t compatible with the collections you chose (some providers only accept point-based AOIs, for example), you’ll be notified instantly on the same screen. Once you know which collection is best for your AOI, you can click on that collection to get an estimated price quote. All of this with zero emails or phone calls so far.
Now you’re ready to configure the order by entering more information about your needs: acquisition date window, cloud coverage, incidence angle etc. You can add a tag for each of your orders, which is associated with your order all the way until you download your imagery. It further simplifies your tracking and data management processes for tasking orders.
Easier ordering and delivery tracking
In the next step, you get a complete overview of your order details. If everything looks good, you can finalize your order, which would then be passed on to our operations team. We’ve got a team of tasking specialists handling these requests. Once they contact the provider and get a feasibility study, you’re notified via email and this nifty little notification (shown below) within your tasking orders page.
You can select the feasibility option that best matches your project needs. Once this is done, you’re notified to accept the price, and activate the tasking order.
This is how UP42 tasking simplifies your tasking journey, right from the project discovery phase all the way to ordering. But we didn’t stop there. When you have complex projects with pending deadlines, it is quite important to stay on top of the delivery status of your different orders. In your Tasking orders page, as your order is progressing, you can view the footprint of scenes delivered for a particular order.
To summarize, here are the 3 key benefits that we now offer with UP42 tasking:
1. Easy ordering with minimal emails
We remove all of the pains that come with tasking satellites. You can upload and validate complex geometries containing multiple shapes in a single click. With an instant overview of the order price estimate, you can place orders with full clarity into your budget spend.
2. Cross-sensor tasking through UP42
Explore the world's best satellite collections through a single touchpoint. Our standardized tasking process is uniform across all the collections we offer: a single ordering flow, compliance check, and credit balance for your entire organization.
3. A better data management system for your tasking orders
We empower our customers to move fast. Our STAC-compliant data management system makes it easy to integrate downloaded imagery into your data pipelines. If you're using Esri ArcGIS Pro, you can access UP42 data directly from your ArcGIS Pro and share it with the rest of your team.
Watch this video to learn more about UP42 tasking
Conclusion:
We believe that the new tasking ordering flow is a significant improvement for our customers. It will make it easier for you to get the satellite imagery you need, when you need it, and at a price you can afford.
Ready to try out the new tasking ordering flow? Create your UP42 account today and start placing orders! If you have any questions or feedback, drop me a line at [email protected].
PS: If you’d like to learn more about using UP42, check out our recent webinar where we go in depth into our product.
