MultiCAST - PLANETSCOPE MISSION

PLANETSCOPE MISSION

GENERAL INFORMATION

Planet Labs Inc., a public Earth imaging company based in the United States, operates the PlanetScope satellite constellation. The constellation consists of over 200 small satellites that capture high-resolution imagery of the Earth’s surface. The mission aims to provide frequent and global coverage, enabling various applications in agriculture, forestry, environmental monitoring, urban planning, and more.

The company operates its own ground station network to receive and process satellite data. The imagery captured by PlanetScope satellites has a wide range of applications and is used by governments, researchers, businesses, and individuals worldwide. By leveraging a large fleet of satellites, PlanetScope ensures frequent revisits to any point on Earth, enabling the monitoring of dynamic changes and providing valuable insights for a wide range of applications.

With its mission to image Earth every day (a daily collection capacity of 200 million km²/day), PlanetScope contributes to various fields, including environmental monitoring, agriculture, disaster response, urban planning, and many others. The continuous availability of high-resolution imagery plays a crucial role in understanding and addressing global challenges.

PlanetScope Missions

Planet designs, builds, and operates ultra-compact, inexpensive cubesats which can be manufactured in bulk. Over 240 DOVEs from PlanetScope have been launched into very similar orbit planes, circling Earth every 90 minutes. Each satellite is a CubeSat 3U form factor (10 cm by 10 cm by 30 cm), and the PlanetScope camera on each DOVE cubesat currently operates in eight bands – red edge, red, green, green I, yellow, blue, coastal blue and near infra-red.

Launch Date	Number of Satellites	Launch Date	Number of Satellites
22-Jun-16	12	27-Dec-18	12
15-Feb-17	88	1-Apr-19	20
14-Jul-17	48	27-Nov-19	12
31-Oct-17	4	3-Sep-20	26
12-Jan-18	4	28-Oct-20	9
29-Nov-18	16	24-Jan-21	48
3-Dec-18	3	13-Jan-22	44

TECHNICAL DETAILS

PlanetScope imagery products are derived from three cohorts of satellites, with the following instruments: PS2, PS2.SD, and PSB.SD.

The PS2 satellites carry instruments consisting of a telescope called “PS2”. This instrument captures red, green, blue, and near-infrared channels. It produces Scene products which are approximately 25.0 x 11.5 sq km. The PS2.SD instrument is composed of the same “PS2” telescope and a 2D frame detector. It is built with updated Bayer pattern and pass-band filters. This instrument captures red, green, blue, and near-infrared channels. It produces Scene products which are approximately 25.0 x 23.0 sq km. The newest PSB.SD instrument consists of the next generation “PSBlue” telescope. It is built with the “PSB” and the same filter response as PS2.SD instrument. The PSB.SD payloads extend this capability so that in addition to the four bands that are identical to the PS2.SD spectral bands below (Red, Green, Blue, and NIR), there are four additional bands. These additional bands are Red Edge, Green I, Yellow, and Coastal Blue. It produces Scene products which are approximately 32.5 x 19.6 sq km.

The following table provides the technical details of the PlanetScope instruments:

PlanetScope Mission	Primary Sensor	Bands	Spatial Resolution	Radiometric Resolution	Spectral Resolution	Temporal Resolution
PlanetScope PS2 (Dove Classic)	Multiple small satellites (DOVEs)	RGB (Red, Green, Blue), Near Infra-Red	3-5 meters	12 bits	Visible spectrum	Daily revisit for most locations
PlanetScope PS2.SD (Dove-R)	Multiple small satellites (DOVEs)	RGB (Red, Green, Blue), Near Infra-Red	3-5 meters	12 bits	Visible spectrum	Daily revisit for most locations
PlanetScope PSB.SD (Super Dove)	Multiple small satellites (DOVEs)	RGB (Red, Green, Blue), Red Edge, Coastal Blue, Yellow, Near Infra-Red, Green I	3-5 meters	12 bits	Visible spectrum	Daily revisit for most locations

The DOVEs are ultra-compact and inexpensive CubeSats that can be manufactured in bulk. Over 130 DOVEs have been launched into very similar orbit planes, circling Earth every 90 minutes1. Each of the satellites is calibrated with an absolute accuracy of better than 5%1. The fleet of DOVE satellites operate in a relatively low orbit of 475-525 km.

The table below provides the frequencies of the imagery returned from each of the sensors. The first column lists the band order for 3-band, 4-band, and 8-band imagery. The following columns provide the specific frequency ranges for each band for each of the three sensors.

Band Order and Sensor Frequency
Bands	Imagery from PS2	Imagery from PS2.SD	Imagery from PSB.SD
3-band
Band 1=Red	Red: 590 – 670 nm	Red: 650 – 682 nm	Red: 650 – 680 nm
Band 2=Green	Green: 500 – 590 nm	Green: 547 – 585 nm	Green: 547 – 585 nm
Band 3=Blue	Blue: 455 – 515 nm	Blue: 464 – 517 nm	Blue: 465 – 515 nm
4-band
Band 1=Blue	Blue: 455 – 515 nm	Blue: 464 – 517 nm	Blue: 465 – 515 nm
Band 2=Green	Green: 500 – 590 nm	Green: 547 – 585 nm	Green: 547 – 585 nm
Band 3=Red	Red: 590 – 670 nm	Red: 650 – 682 nm	Red: 650 -680 nm
Band4=Near-infrared	NIR:780-860 nm	NIR: 846 – 888 nm	NIR: 845-885nm
8-band
Band 1=Coastal Blue			Coastal Blue: 431- 452 nm
Band 2=Blue			Blue: 465 – 515 nm
Band 3=Green I			Green I: 513 – 549 nm
Band 4=Green			Green: 547 – 583 nm
Band 5=Yellow			Yellow: 600 – 620 nm
Band 6=Red			Red: 650 – 680 nm
Band 7=Red Edge			Red Edge: 697 – 713 nm
Band 8=Near-infrared			NIR: 845 – 885 nm

MAIN APPLICATIONS AND DATA ACCESS

PlanetScope data has diverse applications across various industries. Some of the main applications include:

Land cover classification and mapping
Agriculture monitoring and yield estimation
Forestry management and deforestation detection
Urban development and infrastructure planning
Environmental monitoring, including coastal and wetland studies
Disaster response and recovery

Accessing PlanetScope data can be done through the Planet Explorer web portal, which provides a user-friendly interface to search, visualize, and download satellite imagery. The data is available in various formats, including GeoTIFF, and can be filtered by location, date, and other criteria. Planet Labs Inc. offers different data access plans, including free trial access and subscription-based options.

Through the Education and Research (E&R) Program, Planet provides university access to PlanetScope and RapidEye imagery for non-commercial research use by application. The E&R Program hosts more than 10,000 users across 100+ countries and more than 1,000 universities. Additionally, ESA is offering access to data from the full archive of the PlanetScope missions upon submission and acceptance of a project proposal for scientific research and application development.