Introducing Owl: Planet’s most advanced satellite

Since Planet’s founding in 2011, the mission has been simple yet bold: to make the Earth visible, accessible, and actionable. By pioneering a new approach to space, Planet has built and now operate the world’s largest commercial network of Earth-imaging satellites.

This effort has resulted in Planet’s core product: our global, near-daily scan, which has an unmatched data archive dating back to 2017, capturing years of near-daily imagery for every point of Earth’s landmass and offering unparalleled temporal depth for AI and analytics. Our global scan is a core element of our business, and remains unprecedented in Earth observation.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce Owl™: our next-generation monitoring fleet. With a technical demonstration slated for launch late next year, and the Owl fleet moving into production and launch over the following years, Owl will be designed to deliver frequent, best-in-class imagery faster, enabling customers to receive imagery-enabled insights within as little as one hour of capture. Owls will also include the latest NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) to enable AI at the edge, and help redefine what can be seen and what value we can unlock. We’re excited for this satellite fleet to help further our mission to achieve global security and sustainability.

Why Owl? In keeping with naming our satellites after birds, we chose owls given their keen eyesight and wisdom. This new, state-of-the-art fleet of satellites aims to support Planet’s global near-daily scan capabilities while providing seamless continuity with the existing SuperDove fleet.

Going beyond the currently available 3-4 meter resolution imagery, these new satellites are expected to deliver near-daily, 1-meter class imagery at low latency – a consistent, high-fidelity dataset ideal for integration with the leading AI foundation models and unprecedented among commercial providers. Owl is slated to share the same core spectral bands as our SuperDove constellation, providing uninterrupted compatibility with existing workflows. Planet plans to also offer products that showcase its improved resolution, expanding what customers can explore and accomplish with Planet imagery, from assessing damage after a disaster to detecting vessels to enabling better mapping.

Planet is proud to have helped lead the Earth observation industry with a series of firsts that have not only ushered in a new commercial space ecosystem, but provided critical value within security, commercial, and civil government sectors. It is exactly because PlanetScope Monitoring, enabled by the SuperDove fleet, has become such a foundational piece of the business, and has set the bar for what customers have come to rely on for near-daily, global monitoring, that Planet is committed to continuing to advance and evolve it.

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Source & image credit: Planet