[5] The company designs and manufactures 3U-CubeSat miniature satellites called Doves that are then delivered into orbit as secondary payloads on other rocket launch missions.

[14] Through a deal funded by Norway's Climate and Forests Initiative (NICFI), Planet and its partners Airbus and KSAT are providing access to high-resolution basemaps of 64 tropical countries to help combat deforestation.

[17] In July 2021 Planet Labs announced that they plan to become a public company and list on the New York Stock Exchange through a merger with the SPAC DMY Technology Group Inc IV.

[20] Planet Labs has contracts to supply imagery to various agencies of the US government, including the FAS, NOAA, Oak Ridge, Sandia, the Bureau of Reclamation, and NASA.

[33] On April 18, 2017, Google completed the sale of Terra Bella and its SkySat satellite constellation to Planet Labs.

[10][11][34] As part of the sale, Google acquired an equity stake in Planet and entered into a multi-year agreement to purchase SkySat imaging data.

[40] On 3 July 2020, it was mentioned in the news that the company had "more than 120" active satellites at the time "providing daily imaging coverage over all of the world's landmass".

The company stated in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the layoffs were necessary to align resources with market opportunities, improve operational efficiency, and support long-term growth and profitability.

[49] Planet's Dove satellites are CubeSats that weigh 4 kilograms (8.8 lb) (1000 times lower than other commercial imaging satellites), 10 by 10 by 30 centimetres (3.9 in × 3.9 in × 11.8 in) in length, width and height,[50] orbit at a height of about 400 kilometres (250 mi) and provide imagery with a resolution of 3–5 metres (9.8–16.4 ft) and envisaged environmental, humanitarian, and business applications.

[51][52] RapidEye was a five-satellite constellation producing 5 metres (16 ft) resolution imagery that Planet acquired from the German company BlackBridge.

[92] Each of RapidEye's five satellites contained identical Jena-Optronik Spaceborne Scanner JSS 56[93] multi-spectral pushbroom sensor imagers.

The five satellites traveled on the same orbital plane (at an altitude of 630 km), and together were capable of collecting over 4 million kilometres (2.5×10^6 mi) of 5 metres (16 ft) resolution, 5-band color imagery every day.

[94] SkySat is a constellation of sub-metre resolution Earth observation satellites that provide imagery, high-definition video and analytics services.

[34] Planet acquired the satellites with their purchase of Terra Bella (formerly Skybox Imaging), a Mountain View, California-based company founded in 2009 by Dan Berkenstock, Julian Mann, John Fenwick, and Ching-Yu Hu,[95] from Google in 2017.

[96] The SkySat satellites are based on using inexpensive automotive grade electronics and fast commercially available processors,[97] but scaled up to approximately the size of a minifridge.

[104] On June 13, 2020, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched SkySats 16, 17 and 18 along with a batch of its Starlink communications satellites.

[106] When launched, the SkySat constellation was orbiting at an altitude of 450 kilometres (280 mi) and has a multispectral, panchromatic, and video sensor.