Planet Labs, a leading provider of daily data and insights about change on Earth, announced the shipment of three Pelican satellites to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California ahead of their launch aboard the upcoming CAS500/2 rideshare mission with SpaceX. By launching these satellites to orbit, Planet will further expand the Pelican fleet’s industry-leading capabilities and rapid revisit rate, providing high-resolution, AI-enabled solutions to its customers around the world.

“Kicking off our first Pelican launch of 2026 demonstrates the pace at which we’re scaling our most advanced constellation to date, with higher resolution, faster repeat rates, and lower latency,” said Will Marshall, Co-Founder and CEO of Planet. “By integrating the NVIDIA Jetson platform directly onboard, we are effectively adding a high-functioning AI ‘brain’ to our satellite ‘eyes’ – working to enable answers in minutes rather than hours. This is a move beyond mere imagery towards what we call Planetary Intelligence. By running AI at the edge, we’re striving to provide customers with near real-time answers about the planet, and move insights from the digital to the physical world.”

“The shipment and integration of these spacecraft reflects the incredible momentum of our production line,” said Brian Lewis, Mission Director for Pelican at Planet. “Our rapid manufacturing and design approach allows us to iterate and deploy at scale, providing the high-resolution intelligence customers need to make critical and time-sensitive decisions. This milestone reinforces our commitment to meeting the urgent operational demands of our partners at the pace of global change.”

These first-generation (Gen 1) Pelicans are designed to capture 50 cm class resolution imagery across six multispectral bands, which are optimised for seamless cross-sensor analysis. After completing commissioning, they will join the existing Gen 1 Pelicans in supporting the ongoing delivery of Planet’s 50 cm class products. Each spacecraft on this launch features NVIDIA’s Jetson AI platform onboard to provide edge computing functions. By processing data on-orbit, Planet is working to reduce latency to deliver near-real-time situational awareness and rapid answers directly to customers. To meet the growing demand for high-resolution monitoring solutions, Planet plans to launch additional first- and second-generation Pelican satellites over the next year and beyond.

Planet plans to begin launching its second-generation (Gen 2) Pelican satellites later in 2026, which will be designed to achieve up to 30 cm-class resolution. With these advancements, Planet continues to push the boundaries of intra-day revisit rates and low-latency tasking.

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