Awais Ahmed is the co-founder & CEO of Pixxel, a company building a constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites. Unlike “traditional” cameras, these satellites can see across hundreds of bands, opening up a lot more applications. We talk about the engineering -and funding- required to pull this off and how Awais manages a company between India (where Awais is from) and the US. But that’s just the 1st part of the interview. Then we talk about his vision for the company, which goes way, way beyond sending imaging satellites.

Sponsor: OpenCage

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• Twitter
• LinkedIn

• Awais’s personnal website
• Pixxel’s 3 phase vision
• Maxar HD machine learning upscaling
• Book & Podcast Recommendation
  • The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (Affiliate Link)
  • Profiles of the Future by Arthur C. Clarke (only found it in ebook here, Affiliate Link)
  • Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Affiliate Link)

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:09) - Sponsor: OpenCage

(02:34) - Awais describes himself

(03:46) - Pixxel

(05:07) - What is hyperspectral?

(10:36) - Spacial, Temporal & Spectral Resolution tradeoffs

(18:01) - Hardest part of building satellites

(22:58) - The resolution spotlight

(28:38) - Image Quality Rabbit Hole

(30:42) - The tricky part of raising money

(38:52) - Awais has a big, big vision

(50:42) - Likeliness of Awais's vision within 10 years

(54:14) - Working between India & USA

(59:04) - Personnal investing

(01:01:20) - Importance of Reading

(01:05:36) - Sci-Fi & History

(01:08:33) - Book recommendation

(01:10:43) - Awais in space?

(01:11:54) - Pushing the boundaries of humanity

(01:13:14) - Optimism in a cynical world

(01:19:11) - Support the podcast on Patreon

• Support the podcast on Patreon
• My video on an introduction to satellite images
• Website
• My Twitter
• Podcast Twitter
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• Edited by Peter Xiong
• Find more of his work