The farmer who brought us cows serenaded by Lorde on a trombone has been up to something much more ambitious.
Derek Klingenberg, a cattle farmer and YouTuber in western Kansas, wanted to send a message to space: Specifically, to Elon Musk’s “spaceman,” the dummy astronaut riding in a Tesla launched by SpaceX in February, by herding dozens of cows into the shape of the word “HI.”
Nearly 200 “Dove” satellites owned by Planet Labs orbit the globe every day, taking photos of the earth. Some of this imagery is used by crop monitoring service Farmer’s Edge. This is where Klingenberg wants to show off his cow-art, but he only has past satellites images and the knowledge that they make daily passes in orbit to figure out when and where to position his herd.
