Planet Labs, Inc. (formerly Cosmogia, Inc.) is an American private Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, CA. The company designs and manufactures Triple-CubeSat miniature satellites called Doves that are then delivered into orbit as passengers on other rocket launch missions. Each Dove Earth observation satellite continuously scans Earth, sending data once it passes over a ground station. Together, Doves form a satellite constellation that provides a complete image of Earth at 3-5 m optical resolution. Small size and a relatively low cost enable the company to quickly prototype and test new designs, while avoiding a loss of significant assets in a disaster. The images gathered by Doves, available under an open data access policy, provide up-to-date information relevant to climate monitoring, crop yield prediction, urban planning, and disaster response. With acquisition of BlackBridge in July 2015, Planet Labs had 87 Dove and 5 RapidEye satellites in orbit. In February 2017, Planet launched an additional 88 Dove satellites. In 2017, Google sold its subsidiary Terra Bella and its SkySat satellite constellation to Planet Labs.
Video Planet Labs
History
Planet Labs was founded in 2010 as Cosmogia by former NASA scientists Chris Boshuizen, Will Marshall, and Robbie Schingler.
It successfully launched two demonstration CubeSats, Dove 1 and Dove 2, in April 2013. Dove 3 and Dove 4 were launched in November 2013.
In June 2013, it announced plans for Flock-1, a constellation of 28 Earth-observing satellites.
The Flock-1 CubeSats were brought to the International Space Station in January 2014 and successfully deployed via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer in mid-February. The company plans to launch a total of 131 satellites by mid-2015.
In March 2014, co-founder and CEO Will Marshall presented at the TED conference in Vancouver. In January 2015, the firm raised $95 million in funding. As of May 2015, Planet Labs raised a total amount of $183 million in venture capital financing.
In July 2015, Planet Labs acquired BlackBridge and its RapidEye constellation.
On April 18, 2017, Google completed the sale of Terra Bella and its SkySat satellite constellation to Planet Labs. As part of the sale, Google acquired an equity stake in Planet and entered into a multi-year agreement to purchase SkySat imaging data.
Maps Planet Labs
Satellite constellations
Flock
Flock-1 satellites are CubeSats that weigh 4 kilograms (8.8 lb) (1000 times lower than legacy commercial imaging satellites), 10 cm × 10 cm × 30 cm (3.9 in × 3.9 in × 11.8 in) in length, width and height, orbit at a height of about 400 kilometres (250 mi) and provide imagery with a resolution of 3-5 m (9.8-16.4 ft) and envisaged environmental, humanitarian, and business applications.
Flock 2e, consisting of twenty 3U CubeSats, was launched on 23 March 2016 on the Cygnus CRS OA-6 cargo mission.
Flock-2p, consisting of twelve Dove satellites, and Flock 3p, consisting of 88 Dove satellites, were launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) PSLV-C34s on 22 June 2016 and 15 February 2017, respectively. Flock 3p was the largest satellite fleet ever launched.
Flock 2k, consisting of 48 satellites, launched on 14 July 2017 aboard Soyuz-2.1a.
Flock 3m, consisting of just four dove satellites, was launched in 31 October 2017 on a Minotaur C rocket, along with six of Planet's SkySat satellites.
RapidEye
RapidEye is a five-satellite constellation producing 5-metre (16 ft) resolution imagery that Planet acquired from the German company BlackBridge.
The satellites were built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) of Guildford, subcontracted by MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) of Richmond, Canada. Each satellite is based on an evolution of the flight-proven SSTL-100 bus, and measures less than 1 cubic metre (35 cu ft) and weighs 150 kilograms (330 lb) (bus + payload). They were launched on 29 August 2008 on a Dnepr rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
Each of RapidEye's five satellites contain identical Jena-Optronik Spaceborne Scanner JSS 56 multi-spectral pushbroom sensor imagers. The 5 satellites travel on the same orbital plane (at an altitude of 630 km), and together are capable of collecting over 4 million km (2.5 million mi) of 5-metre (16 ft) resolution, 5-band color imagery every day. They collect data in the Blue (440-510 nm), Green (520-590 nm), Red (630-690 nm), Red-Edge (690-730 nm) and Near-Infrared (760-880 nm).
SkySat
SkySat is a constellation of sub-meter resolution Earth observation satellites that provide imagery, high-definition video and analytics services. Planet acquired the satellites with their purchase of Terra Bella (formerly Skybox Imaging), a Mountain View, California-based company founded in 2009 by Dan Berkenstock, Julian Mann, John Fenwick, and Ching-Yu Hu, from Google in 2017.
The SkySat satellites are based on the CubeSat concept, using inexpensive automotive grade electronics and fast commercially available processors,, but scaled up to approximately the size of a minifridge. The satellites are approximately 80 centimetres (31 in) long, compared to approximately 30 centimetres (12 in) for a 3U CubeSat, and weigh 100 kilograms (220 lb).
The first SkySat satellite, SkySat-1, was launched on a Dnepr rocket from Yasny, Russia on 21 November 2013, and the second, SkySat-2, launched on a Soyuz-2/Fregat rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on 8 July 2014. Four more SkySat units were launched on 16 September 2016, by the Vega rocket's seventh flight from Kourou, and six more SkySat satellites, along with four Dove CubeSats, were launched on a Minotaur-C rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 31 October 2017.
See also
- Earth observation satellite
- Robotic spacecraft
- Spacecraft design
- CubeSat
- RapidEye
- SkySat
- SpaceX
References
External links
- Planet Labs website
- Keynote presentation "Reimagine Change From Space: Using Satellites To Image The Entire Planet" by the Planet Labs co-founder and CEO Will Marshall at the Salesforce.com's "Dreamforce" conference on 15 September 2015.
- Planet Labs on NASA TV (10 November 2015).
- Oriondata Internacional: reseller of PlanetScope and Rapideye images in Chile and others countries in Latin America.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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