SkySats in orbit
Illustration of four SkySats, built by Space Systems Loral for Terra Bella. Spaceflight Industries will launch multiple satellites for Terra Bella on a dedicated rideshare mission slated for launch in late 2017.

Commercial remote sensing company Planet announced Feb. 3 it was acquiring rival Terra Bella from Google for an undisclosed sum, bringing together what the companies believe are complementary capabilities to image the Earth from space.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...