Planet Labs

Planet Labs PBC (formerly Planet Labs, Inc. and Cosmogia, Inc.) is an American public Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends. The company designs and manufactures Triple-CubeSat miniature satellites called Doves that are then delivered into orbit as secondary payloads on other rocket launch missions. Each Dove is equipped with a high-powered telescope and camera programmed to capture different swaths of Earth. Each Dove Earth observation satellite continuously scans Earth, sending data once it passes over a ground station, by means of a frame image sensor. The images gathered by Doves, which can be accessed online and some of which is available under an open data access policy, provide up-to-date information relevant to climate monitoring, crop yield prediction, urban planning, and disaster response. With acquisition of BlackBridge in July 2015, Planet Labs had 87 Dove and 5 RapidEye satellites launched into orbit. In 2017, Planet launched an additional 88 Dove satellites, and Google sold its subsidiary Terra Bella and its SkySat satellite constellation to Planet Labs. By September 2018 the company had launched nearly 300 satellites, 150 of which are active. In 2020, Planet Labs launched six additional high-resolution SkySats, SkySats 16–21, and 35 Dove satellites. Through a deal funded by Norway’s Climate and Forests Initiative (NICFI), Planet and its partners Airbus and KSAT are providing access to high-resolution basemaps of 64 tropical countries to help combat deforestation. It also provides data to FAO's Framework for Ecosystem Monitoring (Ferm).