Planet Launches Pelican-12 Satellite

Planet Labs successfully launched Pelican-12, a second-generation high resolution Pelican satellite, aboard SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from Cape Canaveral, making initial contact and beginning commissioning. This is Planet's 25th satellite sent to orbit in 2026 across four launches, and the fifth Pelican this year — just over three months after Pelican-11, whose findings inform the updated payload and communication systems. Pelican-12 carries a prototype satellite-to-satellite communication package for SES Space & Defense's O3b mPOWER constellation and the NVIDIA Jetson platform for on-orbit AI inferencing, supporting potential commercial data relay services with lower latency.

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