In a world defined by shifting landscapes, strategic uncertainty, and escalating risk, the need for precise, timely geospatial insights has never been more critical. That’s why we’re advancing Planet’s high-resolution capabilities with Pelican—designed to bring sharper imagery, faster tasking, and greater situational awareness to the people and institutions who need it most.

Whether it's monitoring fast moving security situations, tracking illicit activity, or maintaining continuity across global operations, prompt access to high-resolution imagery can make the difference between reacting hastily — or strategically responding with confidence. Planet completed automated commissioning of Pelican-2 just days after launch, and the early imagery from the spacecraft demonstrates enormous potential to deliver sharper data, faster tasking, and greater situational awareness—supporting defense, infrastructure, and commercial missions with enhanced agility and clarity.

Building on SkySat's Legacy

Building upon the established success of our SkySat constellation, Pelican is engineered to deliver continuity for existing workflows while ushering in a new era of capabilities for high-resolution imagery. For years, SkySat has provided analysts, planners, and operators with dependable, intraday imagery to support time-sensitive missions. Customers across a range of sectors regularly draw and rely on this tasking flexibility and rapid revisit cadence that have set a benchmark in Earth observation data.

Pelican ensures a seamless transition for SkySat users by providing crisper imagery so analysts can discern more features, including aircraft and vessels, as well as lower latency to help organizations act more swiftly as they monitor dynamic events and rapidly changing conditions. It’s the next step in delivering clearer insights, faster decisions, and more precise situational awareness for the missions that matter most.

What Makes Pelican Special?

Pelican represents the next step in our agile aerospace methodology where we test, adapt, and iterate to improve performance while deploying new capabilities. This approach allows us to advance the capabilities of the fleet and improve all the elements of the product experience as more satellites are launched with improved hardware and software. With Pelican, users will see:

• Enhanced Imagery: The first generation of Pelicans will provide 50 cm class Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) imagery products derived from improved optics and cameras producing images with more clarity and sharpness. This means customers will be able to discern smaller objects and finer details, leading to more accurate analysis and decision-making.
• Future-Ready Resolution: Pelican spacecraft are designed with the ability to operate at lower altitudes, between 350-375 km, enabling the delivery of up to 40 cm class imagery from first generation Pelicans. This added flexibility positions Planet to further improve image fidelity and support new, higher-resolution use cases as customer needs evolve. Looking ahead, future Pelicans are being designed to support 30 cm class resolution—unlocking even greater visual precision.
• Seamless Integration: Pelican is fully integrated into Planet’s unified tasking platform, ensuring seamless access through the API and Tasking Dashboard. This minimizes onboarding time for existing SkySat users, allowing uninterrupted transition to Pelican imagery.
• Expanded Tasking Opportunities: With expanded tasking windows, Pelican ensures assured tasking and reduced average fulfillment time for flexible tasking, providing our customers with even more opportunities to obtain the data they need promptly.
• Expanded Spectral Range: Six multispectral bands are optimized to support deeper insights across agriculture, land use, and natural resource monitoring. These bands were selected to align with PlanetScope’s spectral coverage and to help Planet provide more calibration support – improving our customers’ ability to conduct cross-sensor analysis.
• JSAT Collaboration: A strategic $230M partnership with JSAT is expected to expand Pelican capacity and increase global imaging availability with a generation of satellites built to deliver 30 cm class imagery. These spacecraft will significantly increase the Pelican program’s high-resolution imaging capacity and global coverage.

Looking Ahead

Pelican will provide the flexibility to unlock powerful new capabilities for the future of high-resolution Earth observation. For example, future Pelicans are designed for near real-time tasking, made possible by drawing on intersatellite links, to help users capture imagery in as little as five minutes. In critical scenarios like disaster response, low-latency tasking can enable near real-time imagery acquisition, allowing for swift situational assessments and rapid deployment of resources to mitigate damage and save lives. This improved in-orbit performance and a more advanced payload will create a path toward 40 cm products and expanded collection opportunities. These early-generation Pelicans will help pave the way for Planet’s goal to develop 30 cm class imaging capabilities in subsequent generations of spacecraft.

Continued progress in the Pelican program is propelled by strategic partnerships and cutting-edge technology. Planet’s collaboration with NVIDIA brings on-orbit analytic processing capabilities to the fleet. Pelican-2 is equipped with the NVIDIA Jetson platform to help reduce the time from data capture to actionable insight—enabling new real-time analytic applications directly from space. At the same time, Planet’s multiyear partnership with JSAT will expand the constellation with additional Pelican satellites, enhancing global coverage and advancing the high-resolution capacity needed to support more demanding and time-sensitive missions.

Pelican is set to deliver faster insights and higher-quality intelligence for the world’s most demanding applications. Whether it's monitoring dynamic events, mitigating risks, or maintaining situational awareness, Pelican empowers users to see more, act faster, and make better-informed decisions. We are excited to bring these advancements to our customers and continue pushing the boundaries of Earth observation technology.

Forward Looking Statements

This blog contains 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 realize any of the potential benefits from current or future product enhancements or strategic partnerships and customer collaborations, the Company’s ability to successfully design, build, launch and deploy its next generation 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. 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 the risk factors 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.