Planet Labs

Planet Labs was founded in 2010 as Cosmogia by former NASA scientists Chris Boshuizen, Will Marshall, and Robbie Schingler. The initial goal of the company was to make use of information gathered from space to help with life on Earth. The group of scientists considered the problem with most satellites to be their large and clunky form, prompting them to build inexpensive and compact satellites to be manufactured in bulk, called CubeSats. The small group began building Planet's first satellite in a California garage.Planet Labs launched two demonstration CubeSats, Dove 1 and Dove 2, in April 2013. Both Dove 1 and Dove 2 were placed in a sun-synchronous orbit. 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 deployed via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer in mid-February. The company planned to launch a total of 131 satellites by mid-2015.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.On January 21, 2018, a Dove Pioneer CubeSat was part of the payload of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket, the first orbital-entry craft launched from a privately owned and operated spaceport at M?hia Peninsula in New Zealand.In July 2018, Planet laid off somewhat less than ten percent of its workforce. In September 2018, the company had launched a total of 298 satellites, 150 of which were still active.On December 18, 2018, Planet announced they were in the process of acquiring the St Louis company, Boundless Spatial, Inc., a geospatial data software solutions company. The portfolio of Boundless will help improve data subscription services and aid in Planet's long-term goal of increasing cooperation between the company and the U.S. government.On 3 July 2020, it was mentioned in the news that the company had "more than 120" active satellites at the time "providing daily imaging coverage over all of the world’s landmass".In August 2020, Planet completed its SkySat Constellation of 21 satellites by launching the final three SkySats on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.In May 2022, SES Government Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of communications satellite owner and operator, SES, in partnership with Planet Labs, was awarded a US$28.96 million contract from NASA’s Communications Services Project for real-time, always-on low-latency connectivity services to NASA spacecraft in low-Earth orbit for routine missions, contingency operations, launch and ascent, and early operations phase communications, using SES's geostationary orbiting C-band satellites and medium Earth orbiting Ka-band satellites, including the forthcoming O3b mPOWER constellation.