Planet Ships Two More Pelicans to Launch Site; Announces Production Line Now Fully Ramped

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about change on Earth, today 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 rapidly manufacture large fleets of Earth-imaging satellites at scale. 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.

Learn more about Pelican capabilities here.

About Planet Labs PBC

Planet is a leading provider of global, daily satellite imagery and geospatial solutions. Planet is driven by a mission to image the world every day, and make change visible, accessible and actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest Earth observation fleet of imaging satellites. Planet provides mission-critical data, advanced insights, and software solutions to customers comprising the world’s leading agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance companies and government agencies, enabling users to simply and effectively derive unique value from satellite imagery. Planet is a public benefit corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange as PL. To learn more visit www.planet.com and follow us on X (formerly Twitter) or tune in to HBO’s ‘Wild Wild Space’.

Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release are “forward-looking statements” about Planet within the meaning of the securities laws, including statements about the expansion of the high resolution capacity of Planet’s fleet, the delivery of such capacity to Planet customers, and the Company’s ability to realize any of the potential benefits from product and satellite launches, either as designed, within the expected time frame, in a cost-effective manner, or at all. Such statements, which are not of historical fact, involve estimates, assumptions, judgments and uncertainties. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those addressed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors are detailed in Planet’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Planet does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events, except as required by applicable law.