The role of large constellations of small satellites in emergency response situations

After Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) disappeared over the Indian Ocean, claims were made that had the planned Planet Labs small satellite constellation been complete, the wreckage would have been found quickly. The Planet Labs system, when complete, will provide once daily images of every point on Earth at three to five meter spatial resolution. The possibility of using such a system to help in the search for aircraft downed in the ocean was examined, taking into account the probability that the image would be captured by the system and the likelihood that wreckage would be identifiable in such an image. Given the conditions of image capture and some information about the rate at which aircraft wreckage will sink, it was found that the probability of capturing an image of the wreckage was 6.92×10^-4 if the wreckage sank in 30 minutes, and 1.725×10^-6 if the wreckage sank in 90 seconds. If the image was captured, human analysts were able to identify the wreckage in simulated imagery with a probability of detection of 0.8 and a probability of false alarm of 0.0. Machine analysis proved less accurate, resulting in P_D = 0.73 and P_FA = 0.33. Given the low probability that the aircraft wreckage could be imaged using a satellite system, even under the optimistic assumption that the aircraft crashed entirely intact and sank in 30 minutes, it is unlikely that a Planet Labs-like system could have assisted in the search for MH370.