Planet Labs To Launch 28 Mini-Satellites By December 2013 For Earth Imagery

Mini-satellites have become increasingly popular in recent times. Whether it’s a DIY project involving a Raspberry Pi or experimental smartphone satellites, these tiny satellites have a huge potential in the global satellite market because of their small size and low manufacturing costs. Taking this business opportunity into consideration, a San Francisco based start-up company called Planet Labs has announced their plans to unleash 28 mini-satellites that shall orbit the earth in a ring pattern with the objective of providing moderate resolution images of smaller areas.

You might be wondering why just moderate resolution images, Well the thing is, we already have commercial satellites that provide high res images of very large areas and the problem with their images is that they take considerable amount of time to be captured and sent back to earth. So Planet Labs has decided to go for medium resolution images of smaller areas that can be sent back faster to the base station and which can be then be used to provide traffic information and help researchers monitor environmental phenomenon like deforestation and melting of ice caps in real time.


The design of these satellites involves the use of 10 centimetres wide standardised modules called as CubeSats that can be fitted together like Lego bricks to form a mini-satellites. In April 2013, the team tested their mini-satellites called Dove 1 and Dove 2 made up of three CubeSats units. The company shall launch two more of these mini satellites in November before the final launch of all the 28 satellites on a new Antares rocket in December 2013.

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