SAN FRANCISCO – Planet’s second Tanager hyperspectral satellite and 18 SuperDoves have arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base for launch no earlier than October on the SpaceX Transporter-18 rideshare.
The SuperDoves contribute to Planet’s daily Earth imagery. Paired with artificial intelligence, PlanetScope detects change in broad areas, which is “core to unlocking new markets,” Planet CEO Will Marshall said in a news release.
The launch of Tanager-2 will double Planet’s “hyperspectral capacity and halve revisit times to detect methane super-emitters and more as part of our project with Carbon Mapper,” Marshall said.
Planet launched the first of four Tanager satellites in 2024 and announced the development in April of a new Tanager model, scheduled to launch as early as 2028, focused on gathering shortwave infrared data.
Tanager-2 is designed to capture imagery in 426 contiguous bands with spectral resolution of roughly 5 nanometers and 30-meter spacial resolution.
Planet released a set of Tanager-1 hyperspectral datasets in 2025. Credit: Planet
Methane and CO2
Government and commercial demand is picking up for hyperspectral datasets, which reveal “things that are either invisible to human eyes or that require much finer spectral resolution to distill,” Jeff Guido, Planet vice president for space mission delivery, said in a recent interview.
The primary mission for Tanager-1 is detecting and quantifying methane and carbon dioxide emissions for a philanthropically funded public-private coalition led by the nonprofit Carbon Mapper.
“Our public methane data and many partners are driving global emissions action, informing mitigation efforts and policy, and reducing harmful impacts on climate, public health and air quality,” Carbon Mapper CEO Riley Duren said in the news release. “This launch represents a major milestone as we continue to expand the capacity of the constellation and scale up data-driven climate action. Carbon Mapper’s methane detection and notification efforts have already enabled the mitigation of large methane sources in diverse regions, and we look forward to making even more impact with Tanager-2.”
The Tanager instrument built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also can reveal water quality and assess wildfire risk.
SuperDoves
Planet began launching SuperDoves in 2019.
The 18 new SuperDoves, called Flock 4J, will supplement PlanetScope, which provides daily global coverage of millions of square kilometers for enterprises, civil government, defense and intelligence customers.
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