Rendering of a Pelican satellite. Photo: Planet Labs

Planet Labs announced a multi-year, $230 million agreement with an unnamed Asia-Pacific commercial partner to build and deliver a constellation of new Pelican high-resolution satellites. Planet announced the deal on Jan. 29, which expands an agreement with the customer and gives the customer specific capacity on these satellites.

Pelican is Planet’s next-generation high-resolution satellite that enables continuity and enhancements over the SkySat fleet, including image quality, spectral bands, imaging capacity, and latency.

This agreement marks Planet’s largest contract to date. The $230 million in commercial payments will be recognized as revenue over approximately seven years. 

Planet will leverage the remaining capacity to serve its own government and commercial customers.

“These types of partnerships are a win-win: Our partners gain critical satellite capabilities and priority access to leading-edge technology, while they help Planet accelerate key space programs and create synergistic benefits for all our customers,” said Planet’s CEO and co-founder, Will Marshall. “We are strategically pursuing a select number of similar opportunities, spanning our Pelican, Tanager and SuperDove satellites across the defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial sectors.”

This is Planet’s third strategic space systems partnership in the last four years. The company has previously engaged in space systems partnerships, including the deployment of the Tanager hyperspectral satellite and the development of space-to-space connectivity solutions for NASA’s Communications Services Project.