Last night, ISRO’s PSLV C-43 rocket successfully lofted 16 Dove satellites – Flock 3r – into space. The satellites have been successfully deployed and we’ve started the automated commissioning process while the Doves get adjusted to their new home 500 kilometers above Earth’s surface. All 16 Doves were deployed into a Sun Synchronous […]

Planet is gearing up to send seven satellites into orbit this November as part of SSO-A: SmallSat Express, a fully dedicated rideshare mission on the SpaceX Falcon 9, procured by Spaceflight Industries. Of the 70 spacecraft onboard, Planet will send up two SkySat satellites, three latest-generation Dove satellites (Flock 3s), and two […]

In November, 2016, Haifa, Israel experienced a fire on the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), causing damage to homes and other infrastructure in the urban forest landscape. The damage was visible in several Earth Observation datasets, including MODIS, Sentinel-2, and the Planet Dove constellation. Yaron Michael, in the Department of Geography and Environment at […]

Many communities live in mountainous or glaciated terrain, with a constant threat of landslides and avalanches. Remote sensing methods, including construction of digital elevation models (DEMs), have the potential to detect deformation of the Earth’s surface—not only horizontally, but also vertically. While active sensors like radar are excellent for detecting this 3D […]

Planet is excited to announce that 16 Dove satellites – Flock 3r – are scheduled to fly on ISRO’s PSLV launch vehicle this fall. Planet’s 16 Doves will ride as secondary payloads. This Flock is being sent to a 500 km altitude Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). SSO’s regular mid-morning crossing times provide […]

On January 21, 2018 at 1:43 AM UTC, Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle lifted off from Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand and successfully deployed Dove Pioneer into an orbit of 300 x 500 km, 83 degree inclination.   Rocket Lab Electron flight ‘Still Testing’ Lift Off. Image: […]

Planet is excited to announce that four Dove satellites – our Flock 3p’ – are scheduled to fly on ISRO’s PSLV-C40 in early January 2018. The primary payload for this mission is a Cartosat-2 Series satellite; Planet’s four satellites will ride as secondary payloads. This is the third time in the last […]

Last month, the Planet team successfully integrated one of our Dove satellites into a Rocket Lab Maxwell deployer to be flown on the 2nd orbital flight (aka “Still Testing”) of Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle. The launch is currently scheduled for December of this year and the rocket will drop off the […]

UPDATE: this launch has been rescheduled. The new tentative launch date is Oct 31, 2017. – – – – – Planet will be launching 6 SkySats (SkySat 8-13) and 4 Doves (Flock 3m) on an Orbital-ATK Minotaur-C rocket from the SLC-576E launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base on October 17, 2017. […]

While Planet’s constellation of satellites currently operates in sun-synchronous orbit, the first generations of Doves were deployed out of the International Space Station (ISS) and therefore do not obey such an orbit. Their configuration in the ISS orbit samples at different local times within the mid-latitudes, and consequently, it is in theory […]