Planet’s Pelican Tech Demonstration Satellite Ready for Launch

Published a year ago via Business Wire

Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, today announced that its Pelican tech demonstration satellite, Pelican-1, along with 36 SuperDoves, have arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in preparation for launch next month. Pelican-1, designed and manufactured by Planet, is the first tech demonstration of Planet’s next-generation, high-resolution fleet, which is expected to replenish and improve upon Planet’s existing high-resolution systems in orbit today. The 36 SuperDoves, Planet’s Flock 4q, will contribute to Planet’s daily monitoring PlanetScope mission.

Pelican-1 is a technology demonstration, built to test Pelican’s integrated design and Planet’s common bus platform. This common bus platform, designed and built by Planet, will also host the Company’s future hyperspectral Tanager mission. Planet launches tech demonstrations across all of its new satellite fleets in order to prove out next-generation systems, test its latest technology, and learn from its performance, improving the scalability of its systems along the way. Pelican-1 is not expected to produce commercial data, but rather obtain critical information and learnings needed to iterate the Pelican design and rapidly scale to a fleet using Planet’s agile aerospace approach. When fully operational, the Pelican constellation is planned to improve upon every dimension of Planet’s existing high-resolution SkySat constellation - faster acquisition and delivery of data, better spatial resolution to see finer details, higher revisit to catch fleeting events, and more ways to combine insights with other analytics and sensors.

The 36 SuperDoves launching will contribute to Planet’s flagship daily, global monitoring mission. This data is used by hundreds of customers in defense, civil government, and commercial markets to take informed action, and better contextualize events they’re seeing on the ground today. Planet’s daily scan and deep archive of data for every point on Earth is unique within the industry and provides customers with a continuous and complete view of their areas of interest. Further, the archive acts as a rich training ground for predictive machine learning and advanced artificial intelligence models, accelerating users’ ability to draw insights from the terabytes of data collected by Planet each day.

“The launch of our first Pelican tech demonstration marks an exciting milestone for us,” said Will Marshall, co-founder and CEO of Planet. “This new spacecraft bus is an exquisite system that will underpin both our Pelican and Tanager fleets and we can’t wait to learn and iterate in our agile aerospace model. The 36 SuperDoves also launching are not to be overlooked. They will join the flock we have in-orbit today, which remains the largest earth imaging fleet, providing our unique daily scan that is helping to unlock new markets.”

Planet is committed to delivering best-in-class data and services to its customers and expects this launch of Pelican-1 and 36 SuperDoves will help further the company’s mission of making change visible, accessible, and actionable. As the launch window nears, Planet, alongside its launch partner, will be sharing more details. Stay tuned.

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 over 900 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 Twitter.

Forward-looking Statements

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, the Company’s ability to successfully design, build, launch and deploy, operate and market new products and satellites 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. Forward-looking statements are based on the Company’s management’s beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to them. Because such statements are based on expectations as to future events and results and are not statements of fact, actual results may differ materially from those projected. Factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: the Company’s ability to obtain and maintain required licenses and approvals from regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a timely fashion, or at all; whether the Company will be able to successfully build, launch and deploy or operate its satellites, including new satellites either as designed, in a timely fashion or at all; the Company’s ability to develop and release product and service enhancements to respond to rapid technological change, or to develop new designs and technologies for its satellites, in a timely and cost-effective manner; whether the Company will be able to continue to invest in scaling its sales organization, expanding its software engineering (including its ability to integrate new satellite capabilities) and marketing capabilities; whether the Company will be able to accurately predict and capture market opportunity; whether current customers or prospective customers adopt the Company’s platform or new products; the Company’s ability realize any of the potential benefits from new products and satellites, as well as strategic partnerships and customer collaborations; and the risk factors and other disclosures about the Company and its business included in the Company's periodic reports, proxy statements, and other disclosure materials filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which are available online at www.sec.gov, and on the Company's website at www.planet.com. All forward-looking statements reflect the Company’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date such statements are made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

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