Look Who it Was Random video

Connecting the other half of the world. | Mark LaPenna | TEDxNaperville

2,620 views · Published 30 November 2018 · 16:46 · Indexed 5 October 2026

Channel: TEDx Talks · 2018 · Nonprofits & Activism

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With all our current technologies,  half of the globe still has no 
access to the Internet. What if there was a way to connect everyone, and the solution is not terrestrial based, but cosmic?
 Since attending Space Camp at the age of 9, Mark LaPenna has had a passion for space. For the first 20 years of his professional career, he worked in the aviation and aerospace industries, mostly in how data could be utilized in a variety of applications.

6 years ago, he was recruited to digitize and commercialize live aviation data, but shortly into his contract, he discovered the shocking fact that of the 100,000 commercial flights daily, nearly 20% of them went untracked during flight operations. He conceived a plan to track these assets from space and, over the following years, built a business on solving this problem. But a new, larger problem was emerging - the cost of transmitting the massive amount of data generated per day from satellites to the Earth was nearly $100M per year. So, Mark pivoted his company to solve this problem and Xenesis was born. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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