SpaceQ Space news and analysis.
It was years in the making, but on March 29 Global Affairs Canada issued Planet Labs a full operating license for their Inuvik based ground station.
The license comes five weeks after a provisional license was issued, and three years after US based Planet Labs submitted its original application.
In a statement provided to SpaceQ, Mike Safyan, VP of Launch said “on March 29, 2019, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) issued a Full Operating License to the CSGSI Inuvik ground station site, enabling fully authorized operations of the antennas supporting Planet’s Flock and SkySat satellite fleets. This major milestone solidifies Planet’s long term investment in the Northwest Territories and unlocks Inuvik as a world-class location for supporting a variety of satellite missions. Planet (Labs) extends a big thank you to Minister Freeland and our partners at GAC for supporting commercial space industry in Canada.”
Planet Labs has five ground station dishes available to them at the Canadian Satellite Ground Station Inuvik. The facility is managed locally by New North Networks, but owned by KSAT.
The five dishes include four which they own and are used for the Flock constellation of small satellites. They also use one KSAT owned dish for their larger SkySat satellites.
This past Sunday, Planet Labs had another 20 Dove satellites launched on an Indian rocket
Yesterday the company rolled out a new service, called the Planet Launch Programs.
Here’s the official announcement;
Today, we’re excited to announce Planet Launch Programs, a new offering that will help our customers get more value out of Planet’s data and drive more return on their investment.
Planet’s three complementary constellations generate a dataset of unprecedented scale that helps our customers gain insights and ultimately make better decisions. We recognized, however, that leveraging this new dataset and our platform can be challenging, particularly for first-time customers.
Planet Launch Programs are designed to lower the barrier to entry and ensure our customers can integrate Planet products into their workflows so as to be successful over the long-term. Launch Programs also help our customers build the knowledge and skills of their teams to help them address future technical challenges before they escalate.
The first Launch Program offering we’re rolling out today is Quickstart, a robust 14-day package that helps customers get up and running fast, from early-stage planning through launch. Quickstarts are comprised of three core phases:
Foundations. Hands-on training and solution design sessions to build an integration and implementation plan.
Execution. Planet engineers work with you to execute the plan, advising on everything from imagery acquisition, analysis, and scaling out to production.
Launch. Planet helps take the solution live and stays engaged via technical exchanges, performance reviews, and other solutions engineering support.
We’re excited to unveil Launch Programs, and through helping our customers, learn from them how we can improve our products and services in the future. For more information about Launch Programs, check out the new website.
