Inside Planet Labs (NYSE: $PL): Satellites, Planet AI & Area 51

He contrasts Planet’s approach—many small satellites using commercial-off-the-shelf electronics and a different risk posture—with earlier eras where satellites were large, bespoke, and extremely expensive. He frames Planet’s ~1,000X cost reduction as a direct result of miniaturization and leveraging consumer electronics supply chains.

Even though Planet operates satellites, Will says the company is fundamentally selling information services, where each sale of an image or analytics is “very, very high margins.” He describes the business as having high barriers to entry like aerospace, but margins that “look like a software business.”

Will describes how a satellite uses a telescope and camera system, metadata, GPS and star cameras to know where it is and what it’s pointed at, then downlinks data via radios. He says the system in orbit images the entire Earth every day and generates about 4 million 47-megapixel images daily, with eight spectral bands per pixel.

Will emphasizes that surviving launch and space conditions is as hard as building the optics: he cites ~15G shaking, ~200G shock loads during stage separation, and cycling from about minus 40°C to plus 20°C every ~45 minutes. He notes the telescope must stay in focus despite tiny tolerances and thermal expansion challenges.

Will contrasts early ~1 megabit/second downlink with current ~2 gigabits/second, describing this as ~1,000X more data per satellite per unit time. He also describes a network of about 48 Planet-owned ground stations placed at high latitudes to maximize contact with polar-orbiting satellites and return data via internet connections.