Planet, a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, today
announced it has expanded its contract with the NASA Commercial SmallSat Data
Acquisition (CSDA) Program to provide access to PlanetScope imagery for
scientific research use for all U.S. Federal Civilian researchers and National
Science Foundation funded researchers, including their contractors and
grantees - roughly 280,000 eligible users. This expands access on the existing
contract that currently supports NASA and NASA funded researchers. Since
Planet’s first contract with NASA in 2019, scientists have leveraged Planet
imagery for a variety of research projects focused on climate change,
biodiversity loss, and complex sustainability problems. Planet is eager to see
what projects this expanded pool of researchers will pursue, as it will enable
more strategic information sharing across research groups and facilitate
greater scientific use. Earlier this month, Planet entered into a definitive
merger agreement with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV (NYSE:DMYQ), a special
purpose acquisition company, to become a publicly-traded company.
Earth is in the midst of a climate and biodiversity crisis—including rapidly
changing forests, high-risk agricultural practices, and melting polar
ecosystems—caused by widespread and endless habitat destruction, and a global
economy still reeling from the worst pandemic in a century. Planet’s
high-cadence and high-resolution data allows researchers and scientists across
the globe to better understand and monitor our dynamic planet. In just the
first half of 2021, researchers utilizing Planet imagery via NASA CSDA have
monitored the melting summer ice in Greenland, evaluated corn and soybean
yields at the sub-field scale, mapped snow-covered areas via machine learning,
and investigated the causes behind the massive Chamoli landslide in India.
“Responding to today’s climate crisis and the loss of biological diversity is
urgently important, and the Earth observation community plays a critical
role,” said Planet co-founder and CSO, Robbie Schingler. “It is imperative
that researchers have access to the best tools that allow them to gain a
deeper understanding of our changing planet. We are excited to deliver
Planet’s high cadence data into the hands of even more users in this research
community so they can highlight facts, discover trends, and prototype new
solutions that accelerate scientific understanding to power climate action.”
Planet is thrilled to provide data to researchers in an effort to unlock even
greater insights and discoveries that can benefit our world.
About Planet
Planet is the leading provider of global, daily satellite imagery and
geospatial solutions. Planet is driven by a mission to image the world every
day, and make change visible, accessible and actionable. Founded in 2010 by
three NASA scientists, Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest Earth
observation fleet of imaging satellites, capturing and compiling data from
over 3 million images per day. Planet provides mission-critical data, advanced
insights, and software solutions to over 600 customers, comprised of the
world’s leading agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance
companies and government agencies, enabling users to simply and effectively
derive unique value from satellite imagery. To learn more visit www.planet.com
and follow us on Twitter at @planet.
