It’s labor day 2022, an American holiday with an origin story from the labor movements of the late 19th century where being a worker was indistinguishable from what it is like today. The factories at the time were places from where a worker was fortunate to return home with all their fingers. Long gone are the labor marches for safety, thankfully replaced by responsible governance. In their place are picnics, school supply spending binges, and sales on all manners of coolers. If anything I’ve marked the Labor Day celebrations of my life in that evolution… the evolution of the cooler from simply a pile of plastic grocery bags with cheap ice to a high tech creation you can not only plug into your car, but that you could - seemingly - take to the desert for days, and still have a cool beverage!

Amidst the hot dogs, hamburgers, and children dreading the first days of school, there is still this moment to reflect on what exactly we do for our labor these days!

Flaming blast furnaces are replaced by glowing computers. Lunch breaks perilously perched atop steel girders have been replaced by legions of coffee starved radar scientists debating which brand of coffee beans should be in the space-age coffee machine gracing every room.

We look for meaning in what we do. We need it now like we needed physical safety then.

Time away from work has been transformed from a treasured benefit into an inviolable religious belief. Vacations went from rare gems to enshrined in a cult like following espousing their benefits like a health food nut promoting a new life saving tea. Considering the laborers of the 1890s celebrated in the streets having merely one day off for this holiday its nearly a fantasy that now more and more firms, like ours, offer ‘unlimited vacation.’

Imagine what a worker on an automobile production line in 1920 would have thought if they could start their day at 10am let alone work from home!

So, we arrive at this moment with that history. Given the global nature of the work, and team, at EO59 there are so many more stories to include. From Estonia to Sweden, North to South Italy, Canada, and even Chile we’re all bringing the narratives of our peoples with us each day to the team. All of which is something truly breathtaking from a modernity versus industrial era work-place culture lens!

Our days as satellite radar / InSAR professionals are fascinating. We are here for the variety, the passion of the team and the clients, the incredible chance to innovate against persistent challenges, and most of all for love.

That’s it, that’s the secret sauce of today at EO59 and - hopefully - from wherever you work. We love our work, not merely for some kitsch cute expression but for the raw unadulterated truth that composes real love.

It’s emotionally challenging to know that what you are looking at, from orbit, and from a screen with a coffee, is impacting thousands of lives.

It’s not work whereupon you go home, put down the brief case and walk away from it. It’s haunting work, it follows you and you want it to. You want to find solutions, you want to love it back. Not because it’s your job, but rather because it is your calling.

Each day we speak to each other, around the world, share stories, recipes, photos of our families doing a myriad of life, and each day we bring that life with us to our clients.

We spent countless hours at work with algorithms. We stare at data in so many different ways it makes origami look simple. We push, and pull, science to it’s limits and back more times in an hour than a freshman in college chemistry lab. Yet, never, ever, will you find any of us losing sight of why. We know exactly why, we feel it in our bones why we do it. We are there working at a level where ‘labor of work’ as a definition is exhausted for our clients mission.

Be it a retaining wall beside a parking lot that is so seemingly bane no one would perceive the Earth shattering moment in its movement. That is until you zoom out, notice that parking lot is beside a hospital. That hospital is the last functional facility in a combat zone. That is the last front line between countless children, families, lives, and oblivion. We know exactly why we push on.

Yet, like a Tarantino movie, all of a sudden there’s a team call with an urgent discussion on the proper way to produce passata (Italian tomato sauce). Suddenly we are summoning GrandMa’s secrets from around the planet. Then you feel that you’re grounded, all is well.

For that is what true love is, it pushes you, it holds you, it drives you on in the night and causes you to sing to yourself in the car like you’re Freddy Mercury!

Each day in an orbit at EO59 is anything but ordinary. This Labor Day we celebrate that extraordinary.

We invite you to grab the nearest high-tech cooler you can find, fill it with beverages, and dream with us about how far you’ve come, how far we all have come.

Join us as you seek insight into motion, InSAR training, satellite InSAR reflectors, and software tools for satellite interferometry professionals. If you’re the type to get really hungry doing some big data processing, we’ve got the perfect recipe for a killer launch day meal. Seriously, just ask!

Here’s to you!