Over the last month, we’ve been working feverishly to expand and update the satsearch website. I’m excited to announce that we’re releasing a host of new features this week, including a completely new data set for our users to search through: the satsearch mission archive. This mission archive expands on our vision to build a single resource that offers users the ability to explore the global space supply chain and assess the state of the space sector worldwide.
Building a mission archive has been on our roadmap for a while. Ever since Erik Laan, founder of Eye On Orbit, and I sat down to discuss the vision for satsearch and the possibility of collaborating, we’ve had an eye on (no pun intended!) adding missions to our growing supply chain database. Eye On Orbit is devoted to bringing developments in space exploration and commerce to society and business by providing technical consultancy on policy, programmes, projects and proposals for space activities, intelligence on space missions, systems and data, and services for space education and outreach. This is directly in line with our goals at satsearch: hence it seemed obvious that we should partner in our efforts to democratize access to the growing, global space industry.
One of the unique assets that Erik has developed and actively maintains is the Space Missions Manifest (SMM). The SMM enables users to search through past, present, and future space missions. We’ve partnered with Eye On Orbit to leverage the SMM, enabling satsearch’s users to access information about space missions directly through our website. Over the past month, we’ve been working behind the scenes to integrate the SMM into our database.
This announcement marks the official launch of the satsearch mission archive, powered by Eye On Orbit. Users can now search for space missions in the same way they’ve been able to search for space suppliers, products, and services. We’re very happy to add Eye On Orbit to our growing partner ecosystem, as we work towards opening up access to the space industry by building the missing data layer.
Developing and launching the mission archive also forced us to think about how we can simplify the way users can get to the data that they need, in as few clicks as possible. To this end, we’ve refactored our website structure and set up the following “hubs” that allow users to directly access each of the data sets that we’ve released to date. All four hubs are also easily accessible at the top of every satsearch page.
- Supplier hub: this page allows users to use our search engine and interactive map to explore the array of space suppliers around the world.
- Product hub: this page allows users to use our search engine and category browser to explore space products offered by suppliers globally.
- Services hub: this page allows users to use our search engine to explore space services offered by suppliers globally.
- Mission hub: this page allows users to use our search engine to explore past, present, and future space missions.
Not only do these new hubs allow satsearch users to easily access the underlying satsearch database, it also helps us strengthen our reach through popular search engines, enabling us to support a wider user community around the world.
As we continue to grow our platform, we will develop, expand, and improve the ways that users can navigate the global space supply chain. We have a host of new features in our roadmap for 2019, so stay tuned!
If you have feature ideas/requests to improve our platform, or if you’d like to partner with us to democratize access to the global space supply chain, we’d love to hear from you! Just shoot us an email at [email protected].
Ad astra!