The geospatial industry is moving beyond just "seeing" the world; the current priority is the speed of decision-making. For professionals managing critical assets, whether monitoring ports across global supply chains or tracking rapid infrastructure development, the window for effective action is shrinking.

While satellite imagery remains an essential tool for understanding change, latency — the time from collection to delivery — is a critical bottleneck. Planet provides faster tasking with greater clarity through our high-resolution Pelican™ fleet, with on-orbit AI, multiple revisits per day, and improved optical performance. Plus, simple and flexible options for accessing the high-resolution imagery through our Tasking Dashboard.

In our latest Agile EO webinar, we explored the roadmap for our Pelican™ constellation and how a foundational change in tasking credits will help accelerate access to actionable insights. Keep reading to learn more.

Pelican: Next-Generation Capabilities for High-Resolution

The Pelican constellation represents a significant upgrade to our high-resolution fleet. It provides continuity for existing SkySat® users while introducing substantial technical improvements designed to empower faster strategic decisions, including:

• Improved Optical Performance: Pelican delivers sharper, more detailed imagery by eliminating the scene-to-scene misalignment sometimes found in older hardware generations.
• On-Orbit AI: Equipped with the NVIDIA Jetson AI platform for onboard edge compute, Pelican is designed for near real-time intelligence, accelerating the delivery of actionable data.
• Increased Frequency: The constellation is built for multiple daily revisits, allowing users to track changes as they unfold.
• Future-Proofing: While the current Pelican Gen 1 supports the ongoing delivery of Planet's 50 cm products, the roadmap includes Pelican Gen 2, which will deliver 30 cm class imagery.

The integration of AI-driven intelligence and high-frequency revisits means Pelican doesn't just capture images, it delivers the near-real-time situational awareness required to make critical decisions in hours, not days.

Simplicity at Scale: Tasking Credits

Traditional "price-per-square-kilometer" models for purchasing tasked imagery often require multiple quotes and extensive pre-planning. To streamline this process, Planet has implemented tasking credits: a new, flexible method for ordering imagery across SkySat, Pelican, and Tanager. Key features of this approach include:

• A Unified Tasking Dashboard: Customers purchase a pool of credits that can be used across our tasking constellations.
• Operational Agility: As needs change, users can easily shift between Planet tasking options: Assured Tasking for when an image is needed at a particular time or very narrow window; and Flexible Tasking, when imagery is needed within a general timeframe, for fewer credits.
• Interoperable Fulfillment: This new feature in the Tasking Dashboard allows users to select All Satellites. This option automatically uses SkySat or Pelican satellites — whichever can fulfill the request first to ensure the fastest possible delivery.

These foundational changes to our tasking model ensure customers can deploy our entire high-resolution fleet to capture their areas of interest with speed and flexibility.

The Roadmap to Near-Real Time

The transition to Pelican and tasking credits provide a responsive, resilient, and high-cadence monitoring ecosystem. By combining rapid tasking with accelerated processing pipelines, Planet is reducing the friction between a satellite passing overhead and an analyst receiving a notification on their screen.

The current 50 cm parity with SkySat is just the beginning. As we move toward 30 cm class imagery and even lower latency, the ability to monitor the world in near real-time will become a standard requirement for making informed, rapid decisions on a global scale.

Get Started

Ready to transform your tasking workflows? Watch the full on-demand webinar to see a live demonstration of new features in our Tasking Dashboard and explore how our next-generation Pelican constellation can support your strategic decision-making.