Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, today unveiled details about plans for Pelican, its next-generation satellite constellation, which was previously announced at Planet Explore 2021.
Pelican is designed to rapidly capture changing events as they unfold and to provide a leap forward in capabilities for Planet customers – from higher revisit frequency and higher spatial resolution, to faster data access and delivery and real-time analytics. The program is under current development on-site at Planet’s in-house design and manufacturing facility.
“We are seeing strong and growing demand from multiple market segments for our high resolution products today. We have designed our next generation ‘Pelican’ fleet to meet the evolving needs of customers who want real-time information about global events as they unfold – from floods and wildfires to political conflicts and threats to human rights. Pelican’s rapid response and higher resolution will do exactly that,” said Planet’s Co-Founder and CEO Will Marshall.
Planet plans to launch Pelican starting early next year, subject to obtaining an FCC license, with a constellation of up to 32 new tasking satellites, to replenish and improve upon the capabilities of Planet’s existing 21 SkySat satellites. Pelican will provide higher resolution images at up to 30 cm resolution, enabling customers to see finer detailed information, as well as improved locational accuracy.
Pelican is also designed to offer customers increased rapid revisit opportunities, with 12 imaging opportunities per day over most of the Earth, and up to 30 per day in mid-latitudes. With such capacity, Planet expects users will be able to capture transitory events multiple times per day, increasing their likelihood of obtaining a high value image, including during unpredictable or cloudy weather.
Leveraging third-party communications satellites, Pelican will also offer reduced latency for downloading data, creating shorter time loops between tasking and receiving data across the world. Pelican further will have electric propulsion for agile maneuverability and low-flying operations. Finally, Pelican will have significant on-board compute, enabling Planet to quickly deliver enhanced data to power customer real-time insights.
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Kymeta to offer mission-critical LEO connectivity through OneWeb Technologies
Redmond WA (SPX) Apr 22, 2022
Kymeta and OneWeb Technologies announced an agreement to distribute reliable, secure, and cost-effective broadband connectivity services to the U.S. government.
The new managed satellite service offering enables Kymeta to provide government customers with hardware solutions that are packaged with secure and resilient network access from OneWeb Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company OneWeb.
Access to broadband connectivity services fr … read more
