Took an image of an airport from orbit and ran a model on board to find the aeroplanes in it.
| Operator | Planet Labs PBC |
|---|---|
| Developer | Planet Labs PBC |
| Host | Pelican-4 |
| Where | Earth orbit |
| Class | perception |
| Hardware | NVIDIA Jetson Orin module |
| Model or software | An object-detection model, not named |
| Launched | 26 Aug 2025 |
| Ran | 25 March 2026 |
| Catalogue | PELICAN-4, number 65316; matched by name, the reviewer's judgement |
“the successful deployment and execution of AI-driven object detection directly onboard its Pelican-4 satellite”
Planet Labs PBC: the operator. Planet Successfully Runs AI in Space, Planet Labs PBC. Published 7 Apr 2026 (date printed on the release). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full: the body of the release, about 3,600 characters, up to its forward-looking statements. Read from an Internet Archive capture of the page.
“Planet's Pelican-4 captured an image of an airport, then successfully utilized its onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin module to run an AI model to detect airplanes in moments”
Planet Labs PBC: the operator. Planet Successfully Runs AI in Space, Planet Labs PBC. Published 7 Apr 2026 (date printed on the release). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full: the body of the release, about 3,600 characters, up to its forward-looking statements. Read from an Internet Archive capture of the page.
“This first detection has an 80% detection accuracy on raw imagery.”
Planet Labs PBC: the operator. Planet Successfully Runs AI in Space, Planet Labs PBC. Published 7 Apr 2026 (date printed on the release). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full: the body of the release, about 3,600 characters, up to its forward-looking statements. Read from an Internet Archive capture of the page.
“This represents one of the first times an Earth imaging satellite has moved beyond simple data capture to onboard AI inference and analysis.”
Planet Labs PBC: the operator. Planet Successfully Runs AI in Space, Planet Labs PBC. Published 7 Apr 2026 (date printed on the release). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full: the body of the release, about 3,600 characters, up to its forward-looking statements. Read from an Internet Archive capture of the page.
“was joined by five more in 2025: Pelican-2 in January, Pelican-3 and Pelican-4 in August, and Pelican-5 and Pelican-6 in November”
Planet Labs PBC: the operator. Pelican 2025 in Review, Planet Labs PBC. Published 13 Jan 2026 (page metadata). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: the section on launches, about 600 of 4,000 characters.
OBJECT_NAME: PELICAN-4; LAUNCH_DATE: 2025-08-26
CelesTrak satellite catalogue: a public catalogue. Satellite catalogue record 65316 (PELICAN-4), CelesTrak. Published undated (a live catalogue record; dated by when it was read). Read 4 Oct 2026, in full.
“Planet Labs uses NVIDIA to convert satellite imagery into real-time intelligence in orbit”
NVIDIA, the chip supplier: a supplier. Space Computing: On-Orbit AI & Accelerated Computing, NVIDIA. Published undated (no date in the text; page metadata says 2026-09-16). Read 4 Oct 2026, in part: the first 3,800 of 4,100 characters.
The accuracy figure is the operator's, for one image. Its wording of priority is careful: "one of the first times", not the first. The release was read from an archive capture of Planet's investor page, because the page itself refused the request.
Until 4 October 2026 this entry rested on the chip supplier's product page alone, at R0. Planet's own release was then found and read, which makes it an operator's statement of a run: R1. The launch is confirmed from the catalogue.