People often associate space with their childhood, and I’m no different. I think my mind was blown for the first time when I learned about the unfathomable distances between us and the rest of the universe. I went to AstroCamp twice as a kid. I attended an astrophysics summer program across the country in high school. In 2017, I drove 16 hours to see the total solar eclipse in Nashville. I even named my daughter Luna after the moon.

Naturally, I’m excited to announce Upfront’s investment in OurSky. OurSky is a software platform that aggregates telescope image data from a global network of optical telescopes, enriches the data, and sells access to the data via an API.

Advanced telescope on the OurSky network

There are tens of thousands of professional and amateur optical telescopes already deployed around the world that have the capability to service commercial and government space domain awareness (SDA) use cases. But they are siloed, difficult to use, and heavily underutilized by their owners. OurSky is building software, hardware, and incentive mechanisms to onboard these nodes to one platform, building the largest network of space observation infrastructure in the world. Using their distributed telescope array and their advanced software tools, OurSky can pinpoint the exact location of objects in orbit. This is especially important given the rapid growth in the number of satellites orbiting the earth, especially in Low Earth Orbit.

The line is a satellite moving through the image in LEO

Today, this SDA data is used for detecting adversarial satellites, monitoring newly launched payloads, predicting where objects will re-enter the atmosphere, collision detection and prevention, orbital debris tracking, and more. It’s tempting to marvel at the possibilities for researching the farthest areas of the cosmos, especially for me. But we made this investment because of the commercial, defense, government, and civilian science applications of this data. We believe OurSky’s platform can become a key enabling technology for the space economy, and we can’t wait to get into the hands of customers.

To read more about their vision and the founders Dan Roelker and Alex Hawkinson, read TechCrunch’s coverage of the company here.