CSDA Vendor - Planet
NASA's Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program has acquired commercial datasets from Planet for scientific purposes.
Planet Labs PBC (Planet) was one of the companies selected for evaluation in the original NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program Pilot. Planet distributes optical to near-infrared data acquired by its Doves, RapidEye, and SkySat satellite constellations.
- The Dove constellation provides near-daily PlanetScope imagery covering Earth’s entire landmass with a resolution of 3 meters per pixel. Dove constellation instruments have an ongoing new generation of SuperDove satellites that have additional bands and larger square kilometers per individual image captured.
- SkySat satellites can revisit any location on Earth multiple times a day, obtaining 50 cm/pixel high-resolution imagery. CSDA has acquired a limited set of SkySat data.
- RapidEye is a retired constellation of five satellites operational from 2009 to 2020. The constellation captured more than 660,000 images of Earth’s total landmass. RapidEye image resolution is approximately 5 m/pixel.
Taken together, these constellations have produced a rich body of imagery users can tap to conduct analyses of Earth’s climate and environmental change.
Authorized Data Use and Users
All members of the U.S. Federal civil agencies (including the National Science Foundation) and their contractors, subcontractors, and partners have access to Planet data acquired by NASA’s CSDA program. Approved users have access to all CSDA archived PlanetScope and RapidEye data, and a limited set of SkySat data. Note that Planet basemap products are not available through the CSDA program.
End User License Agreement
Obtaining Data
- To request access to CSDA-distributed data, complete the CSDA Authorization form. The CSDA team will verify if the user is authorized for data access.
- For data not available through the SDX, please use the Data Request Form to initiate a request with the CSDA Data Management Team to acquire the data from Planet
Copyright
Data products and derivatives must contain the following copyright markings (where YYYY is the year of the image acquisition):
- For data products: “© Planet Labs PBC YYYY. All rights reserved.”
- For derivatives: “Includes copyrighted material of Planet Labs PBC. All rights reserved.”
- A joint copyright notice may be used as appropriate
Authorized users should send Planet a courtesy copy of any publications that include Planet data.
CSDA Acknowledgment
To help CSDA identify your publications, we request that you include the following acknowledgment when publishing work created using these data:
"This work utilized data made available through the NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program."
Evaluation
A SuperDove Geometric Quality Assessment Summary report and presentation and Radiometric Assessment of PlanetScope Surface Reflectance report are available.
Research Using Planet Data
CSDA Program Publications in Zotero
Planet Commercial Data
PlanetScope/Dove Satellite Constellation and Instrument Characteristics
| Mission Characteristics | International Space Station Orbit |
|---|---|
| Orbit Altitude (reference) | 400 km (51.6° inclination) |
| Max/Min Latitude Coverage | +/- 52° (depending on season) |
| Equator Crossing Time | Variable |
| Sensor Type | Three-band frame Imager or four-band frame Imager with a split-frame NIR filter |
| Spectral Bands | Blue: 455-515 nm Green: 500-590 nm Red: 590-670 nm NIR: 780-860 nm |
| Ground Sample Distance (nadir) | 3.0 m (approximate) |
| Frame Size | 20 km x 12 km (approximate) |
| Maximum Image Strip per Orbit | 8,100 km2 |
| Revisit Time | Variable |
| Image Capture Capacity | Variable |
| Camera Dynamic Range | 12-bit |
PlanetScope/Dove in Sun-Synchronus Orbit
| Mission Characteristics | Dove Classic (PS2) | Dove-R (PS2.SD) | SuperDove (PSB.SD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orbit Altitude (reference) | 450–580 km | 450-580 km | 475-525 km |
| Inclination | ~98° | ||
| Max/Min Latitude Coverage | ±81.5° (depending on season) | ||
| Equator Crossing Time | 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. (local solar time) | ||
| Sensor Type | Three-band frame Imager or four-band frame Imager with a split-frame NIR filter | Four-band frame imager with butcher-block filter | Eight-band frame imager with butcher-block filter |
| Spectral Bands | Blue: 455–515 nm Green: 500–590 nm Red: 590–670 nm NIR: 780–860 nm | Blue: 464–517 nm Green: 547–585 nm Red: 650–682 nm NIR: 846–888 nm | Coastal Blue: 431–452 nm Blue: 465–515 nm Green I: 513–549 nm Green II: 547–583 nm Yellow: 600–620 nm Red: 650–680 nm Red-Edge: 697–713 nm NIR: 845–885 nm |
| Ground Sample Distance (nadir) | 3.7 m (approximate) | ||
| Frame Size | 24 km x 8 km (approximate) | 24 km x 16 km (approximate) | 32.5 km x 19.6 km (approximate) |
| Maximum Image Strip per Orbit | 20,000 km2 | ||
| Revisit Time | Near-daily at nadir | ||
| Image Capture Capacity | Hundreds of millions km2/day | ||
| Camera Dynamic Range | 12-bit | ||
RapidEye Satellite Constellation and Instrument Characteristics
| Mission Characteristics | Information |
|---|---|
| Number of Satellites | 1 |
| Orbit Altitude | 630 km in Sun-Synchronous Orbit |
| Equator Crossing Time | 11:00 a.m., local solar time (approximate) |
| Sensor Type | Multispectral push broom |
| Spectral Bands | Blue: 440–510 nm Green: 520–590 nm Red: 630–685 nm Red Edge: 690–730 nm NIR: 760–850 nm |
| Ground Sampling Distance (nadir) | 6.5 m |
| Swath Width | 77 km |
| Maximum Image Strip per Orbit | Up to 1,500 km of image data per orbit |
| Revisit Time | Daily (off-nadir)/5.5 days (at nadir) |
| Image Capture Capacity | > 6 million km2/day |
| Camera Dynamic Range | 12-bit |
SkySat Satellite Constellation and Instrument Characteristics
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Mass | 110 kg |
| Dimensions | 60 x 60 x 95 cm |
| Total DeltaV | 180 m/s |
| Onboard Storage | 360 GB + 360 GB cold spare storage |
| RF Communication | X-band downlink (payload): variable, up to 580 Mbit/s X-band downlink (telemetry): 64 Kbit/s S-band uplink (command): 32 Kbit/s |
| Design Life | ~6 years |
| Geolocation Knowledge | 30 m CE90 in a 500 km altitude orbit |
| Ground Sample Distance | [SkySat-1, SkySat-2] Panchromatic: 0.86 m Multispectral: 10 m [SkySat-3 – SkySat-13] Panchromatic: 0.72 m Multispectral: 1.0 m 2.3 targets (6.6 x 10 km) per minute |
| Revisit (per satellite) | 4-5 days *Reference altitude 500 km |
| Equatorial Crossing Time (UTC) | 10:30: Current C-Gen satellites 13:00: SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 13:00: Block-2 C-Gen satellites |
| Image Configurations | Multispectral Sensor (Blue, Green, Red, NIR) Panchromatic Sensor |
| Product Framing | SkySat Satellites have three cameras per satellite that capture overlapping strips. Each of these strips contains overlapping scenes. One scene is approximately 2560 x 1080 pixels |
| Sensor Type | CMOS Frame Camera with Panchromatic and Multispectral halves |
| Spectral Bands | Blue: 450–515 nm Green: 515–595 nm Red: 605–695 nm NIR: 740–900 nm Pan: 450–900 nm |