Planet Labs, a leading provider of daily data and insights about change on Earth, announced it has shipped its Pelican-3 and Pelican-4 satellites to Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of their launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Planet’s satellite production line is now fully ramped and operational, with multiple Pelican and Tanager satellites currently in production, demonstrating a proven ability to manufacture large fleets of Earth-imaging satellites at scale rapidly. Planet has launched and deployed over 650 Earth observation satellites to date.
“Building on our recently-announced satellite service partnerships in Asia and Europe, we’ve ramped up production of our Pelican fleet,” said Will Marshall, Co-Founder and CEO of Planet. “Launching these additional satellites enables us to more rapidly respond to market needs. With high resolution, low latency, and NVIDIA’s lightning-fast GPU onboard, Pelicans are the optimal satellites to meet the demands of the AI transformation.”
This is one of several upcoming Pelican launches scheduled for this year. These Gen 1 Pelican satellites are built to provide up to 40 cm class resolution imagery across 6 multispectral bands optimized for cross-sensor analysis. They are also equipped with NVIDIA Jetson AI chips to facilitate on-orbit computing at the edge, helping accelerate the delivery of valuable insights to customers. The second generation Pelican satellites, launching beginning next year, are expected to reach 30 cm.
“It’s incredible to see the progress the team has made with the Pelican program. Each launch marks a significant milestone in building a constellation that allows rapid, intraday global revisits and helps our customers solve the problems that challenge them,” said Brian Lewis, Mission Director, Pelican. “Whether it's more urgently responding to natural disasters or providing critical defense and intelligence awareness, Pelicans are foundational to Planet’s mission to use space to improve life on Earth. The continued expansion of this fleet will help us achieve a more secure, stable, and sustainable future.”
This pod of Pelican spacecraft will supplement Planet’s fleet of tasking satellites, providing significant additional capacity for on-demand, high-resolution tasking for customers in sectors including defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial enterprise. Planet plans to launch additional Pelican satellites over the next year. Designed and built to interoperate with other Planet spacecraft, Pelican aims to continue seamlessly enabling and empowering customer access to rapid, crisp, and dynamic imagery and data solutions.
Click here to learn more about Planet Lab's Pelican Satellites
