Planet Labs, a leading provider of daily data and insights about change on Earth, announced the successful launch of Pelican-12, an updated second generation  high resolution Pelican™ satellite. Pelican-12 was launched to orbit aboard the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission with SpaceX from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Planet has successfully made initial contact with the satellite and has begun the process to commission the satellite and lower its orbital altitude. This successful mission marks Planet’s 25th satellite sent to orbit in 2026, across four launches.

Pelican-12 reached orbit just over three months after Pelican-11, the engineering pathfinder Planet launched in July, and carries updated payload and communication systems informed by that mission. Like Pelican-11, Pelican-12 will allow Planet to test and validate new technologies before they are carried onto future Planet spacecraft. Among them is a prototype communication package designed to test satellite-to-satellite communications for SES Space & Defense by downlinking imagery via the company’s O3b mPOWER satellites. This technology demonstration is part of Planet’s work to explore commercial data relay services that could reduce latency in the delivery of data to customers. Pelican-12 also carries the NVIDIA Jetson platform for onboard edge compute to accelerate on orbit AI inferencing.

Gen 2 Pelicans are designed to provide up to 30 cm class imagery, a step beyond the 50 cm class captured by Gen 1. Pelican-12 is the fifth Pelican to launch in 2026. With Pelican production at Planet’s expanded Berlin facility scheduled to start this year, and additional Pelican launches planned for 2027, Planet continues to scale its manufacturing capabilities to keep pace with rising customer demand for its high-resolution data and Satellite Services offerings.