PL
Another bird heads to the launchpad
Planet Labs is sending Pelican-12 into the sky on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, and yes, the company really does have a thing for bird names. The updated Gen 2 satellite has arrived at Cape Canaveral, where it’ll wait for liftoff after getting payload and communications upgrades from the earlier Pelican-11 model.
Why this matters more than a space selfie
This isn’t just a shiny-object moment. Planet says Gen 2 Pelicans can deliver up to 30 cm-class imagery, sharper than Gen 1’s 50 cm-class shots, which should help with everything from crop watching to infrastructure monitoring and disaster response. The company also wants to test commercial data relay services and intersatellite communications, including two-way data rates above the 1 Mbps it showed in a 2025 demo.
The real investor angle
Pelican-12 will be Planet’s fifth Pelican launch in 2026, which tells you the company is trying to turn satellite launches from “cool engineering project” into a repeatable production line. Planet is also expanding output at its Berlin facility and planning more Pelican launches in 2027, all aimed at feeding demand for higher-resolution data products and satellite services.
Big picture
PL is still in the messy middle of the growth story: lots of moving parts, a stock that’s been bruised, and a business trying to prove that more launches can translate into more durable revenue. If the satellites keep getting better and the launch cadence stays hot, the market may eventually stop treating Planet like a sci-fi demo and start treating it like a real recurring-data business.