Climate change products will get more high definition for customers of Planet, as the Earth observation company plans new satellites, more frequent revisit times and synthetic aperture radar (SAR).
The new products include Pelican – a new fleet of satellites that will launch next year with high-resolution capabilities and full operations in 2023 – and Fusion with SAR, which adds to the Fusion Monitoring product that provides streams of data for analysis over a period of time.
Planet says the new products will have special appeal to customers working in financial consultancies as well as environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting companies to “monitor investment risks and ESG targets with ease,” according to a SpaceQ interview with a spokesperson.
The Planet spokesperson, asking to attribute all comments to the company in general, said the new products will enhance Planet’s ability to provide near real-time information on evolving events, such as disasters induced by global warming.
“Businesses are now looking to report on these new targets with accurate detail,” the spokesperson said, adding the new products “can help review sudden supply chain changes due to a natural disaster, or capture valuable changing landscape data in regions like the Amazon, where clouds obscure illegal logging and deforestation.”
Planet is a private company with more than 430 employees worldwide; it has raised over $400 million USD since its foundation in 2010, and has Google as an equity stakeholder following Planet’s acquisition of Terra Bella in 2017 from the Silicon Valley search engine giant. Planet’s products include daily images with 3 to 5 meter-per-pixel resolution, “high temporal cadence” sub 1-meter imagery, and computer vision-based analytics.
Planet is now readying to enter the public market via a definitive merger agreement with a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) called dMY Technology Group. Partial Q2 financial results released Sept. 16 showed Planet’s revenue increased 19 percent year-over-year to $30.4 million USD. The company pointed to increased business in subscriptions, as well as more digitization and ESG targets, as helping to fuel the demand.
The Pelican fleet is meant to exceed revisit frequency by up to 10 times (over another existing fleet, known as SkySat) and to allow customers to see details as small as road markings. By comparison, SkySat is advertised on Planet’s website as having 50 cm resolution and capable of revisiting areas on Earth roughly 5 to 7 times a day. SkySat includes 21 satellites, and Planet has 150 satellites overall including its Dove (triple-CubeSat sized) satellite series.
With Pelican, customers will receive images from their task orders with less latency, the Planet spokesperson said, which will especially be important during climate change-induced natural disasters when rapid and informed decisions are necessary. Providing examples of typical disasters facing communities around the world these days, the spokesperson gave examples of how Pelican may be useful for managing fire and floods.
“As fires continue to encroach on communities, Pelican can provide rapid updates on their growth and trajectory to help officials evacuate citizens and work to control the blaze,” the spokesperson said. “When a flood impacts a factory or agricultural field, a company can task a Pelican satellite to see in high resolution what the extent of the damage is, to better inform their market decisions and investments.”
As for Fusion with SAR, the new product will include SAR data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, with a special focus on customers in agriculture. The special benefit of SAR is that unlike optical imaging, this wavelength is unaffected by cloud and can be used in many types of weather conditions in which the ground is obscured.
The spokesperson said the unpredictable weather patterns induced by climate change require farmers to keep constant watch on severe storms, precipitation levels and drought conditions, all of which Fusion with SAR is set to monitor. In some areas of the world, the product will also provide daily revisit times, exceeding current capabilities of every few days.
“By adding SAR data to our Fusion Monitoring product, farmers are able to have the greatest level of insight into the state of their crops, regardless of the weather condition,” the spokesperson added. “As the severity of these storms increase, SAR also helps customers view natural disaster impacts like floods in detail, even when clouds remain.”
Another of Planet’s recent announcements was signing a multi-year launch provider with SpaceX to send its satellites aloft through 2025. Planet’s 600 customers are spread among agriculture, defence, intelligence and mapping.