Planet’s Most Advanced Satellite – New Owl Satellites for 1 Meter Resolution Imaging

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Planet is launching Owl, their next-generation monitoring fleet. They will have a technical demonstration slated for launch late 2026. The Owl fleet moves 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 can be unlocked.

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 the 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 Owl eyes in the skies will get a 10x areal resolution boost and a bigger brain for change detection and feature search as they raster scan the entire Earth every day. And the Owls see in 8 spectral bands (versus 3 for humans), even near-infrared.

Applications and Use Cases

The Owl fleet has the potential to unlock expansive new use cases across a variety of industries:

Global Security: Defense and intelligence customers can expect to see drastic improvements in their ability to detect and classify objects like aircraft or vessels across broad areas, and even receive timely activity updates that drive action. This enhanced imagery can help identify smaller objects, decrease response time, and increase situational awareness.

Commercial Applications: From insurance to construction and forestry, businesses can leverage the data to monitor events on the ground and make better, more timely decisions. For example, insurance providers could use the higher resolution for significantly improved damage assessment after natural catastrophes.

Civil Agencies: Civil governments can use the improved imagery to track natural events like wildfires and droughts with more precision, more quickly help with disaster relief efforts, and even use more accurate building footprints to support permit enforcement.