Photo: Spire Global.

Spire Global has unveiled two new machine learning and analytics products backed by data from its constellation of ship-tracking satellites. According to Spire, both products make finding vessels and information about them easier and faster in combination with its Application Programming Interface (API).

In the past, companies looking to ingest ship-tracking data would have to sift through millions of database entries each day to find ships of interest for making business decisions. According to Spire, its Sense Vessels product addresses this issue by using analytics to find the latest information about the more than 300,00 ships in the ocean via a single request to the company’s API. Building on that, Spire’s new Predict product adds a layer of machine learning that predicts vessel positions into the future.

Spire’s new satellites, on-orbit software upgrades, and new ground stations are the main contributors to the increased amount and quality of maritime data. “Our satellites now collect data from over 75 thousand unique ships each day, they’re tracked in a database of over 300 thousand ships that we keep tabs on, and we can predict where ships are going based on their past and present behavior,” said Spire Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Peter Platzer.

Spire currently manages 40 satellites in orbit as well as a combined terrestrial feed. Improvements on its analytics will continue throughout 2017 and 2018, driven by more launches, ground stations, software upgrades, and advancements in machine learning, the company stated.