The billionaire philanthropists intent on using satellites to save the world | Reuters

"The Gates Foundation invited more than 150 academics and data analysis specialists to Seattle last week for what was billed as a 'Thought Leaders Summit' on the project.

Experts discussed what humanitarian agencies, environmental and land rights groups might want and need.

Amazon Web Services Global Open Data chief, Jed Sundwall, said Radiant would try to 'give humans back their time to focus on research and analysis'.

'Open data is happy data: we have so much data that can tell us about our world but we can't know it because it is too expensive to know it,' he said.

Industry experts said over the past five years the number of operational satellites has jumped 40 percent, and nearly 1,400 now orbit the Earth.

This number could more than double over the next five years as satellites become smaller, lighter and more affordable.

Entrepreneurs have increasingly begun to view the sky as a new market which can help feed the burgeoning global demand for more communications, satellite TV and broadband services.

However satellites are also collecting data from space about the Earth itself. Applications are far reaching - from tracking plant health through chlorophyll to gauging the impact of natural disasters and the surveillance of illegal logging.

Two weeks ago, India launched 104 satellites – 101 of them for foreign companies and agencies - in a single mission as part of its strategic bid for a bigger share of the $300 billion global space industry.

Experts at the Seattle summit said the multiple launch, described as a world record by its space agency, was also significant because 88 were shoebox-sized Dove satellites launched by Planet, a San Francisco-based private satellite operator founded by former NASA scientists.

The constellation of small satellites will, once settled into orbit in six months' time, will photograph the entire Earth every day."