Planet’s Dove Satellite Constellation

Abstract

Planet Labs Inc. (“Planet”) designs, builds, and operates the world’s largest fleet of remote sensing satellites and sells the imagery data and derived products to a wide variety of government, commercial, academic, and nonprofit customers. Planet utilizes an Agile Aerospace approach to take advantage of improvements in commercial-off-the-shelf technologies, increased access to launch opportunities for small satellites, and readily scalable cloud-based IT infrastructure. This chapter describes the development of the Flock constellation, Planet’s medium resolution fleet comprised of Dove satellites, and the surrounding infrastructure required to operate this innovative system.