New Satellite Preps for Launch
Planet Labs Pelican-12 Satellite Arrives at Cape Canaveral for SpaceX Launch
Anonymous
Planet Labs’ Pelican-12 has arrived at Cape Canaveral ahead of its planned launch on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission. Building on Pelican-11, it will test updated communications and payload systems, including steerable-antenna intersatellite links intended to deliver two-way data at higher rates than the company’s earlier 1 Mbps demonstration. The second-generation satellite is designed for imagery up to 30-centimeter class resolution and carries NVIDIA Jetson hardware to test onboard AI processing, with potential to speed data delivery and support applications such as agriculture, infrastructure monitoring and disaster response.
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Planet said Pelican-12 was shipped less than three months after Pelican-11’s July launch, describing the rapid update to the payload and communications systems as evidence of its “end-to-end agile engineering.”
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Planet said Pelican-12 will help validate technologies before they are integrated into future Planet spacecraft, making the satellite part of a broader development and testing program.
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Planet has previously demonstrated onboard AI-driven, near-real-time object detection on Pelican-4; Pelican-12’s Jetson tests build on that earlier work.
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Planet Labs said Pelican-12 would be its fifth Pelican satellite launched in 2026, as the company expands manufacturing capacity and plans additional Pelican launches in 2027.
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