A Chinese lighting vessel taken with Planet Skysat on September 22, 2018. Photo: Planet Labs PBC.

Planet Labs has signed a new seven-figure pilot program with an international ministry of defense (MoD) customer for PlanetScope data enhanced with SynMax artificial intelligence. Planet announced the deal with the unnamed customer on July 15. 

Planet and SynMax are providing a maritime domain awareness solution for vessel detection and monitoring. The customer also expanded its SkySat contact with Planet for high resolution satellite data.

This comes after Planet signed a similar deal earlier this year with the U.S. Navy’s Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific for vessel detection with Planet data and SynMax capabilities. Planet announced the solution with SynMax in 2022.

Planet CEO Will Marshall said the company is seeing growing demand for PlanetScope imagery enhanced by AI partner solutions and pilots like this can turn into large operational contracts. 

“This is part of an evolution towards the ability to scan and locate new threats across large areas, moving beyond prior methods that focused solely on gathering intelligence on known areas of interest. Today’s win is clearly a part of this growing trend,” Marshall said.