NASA Extends Contract with Planet Granting Access to Planet Data to over 300,000 Scientists

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Planet Labs PBC, a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, today announced NASA has exercised an option to extend its contract with Planet under the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program through September 2023. Planet has been providing data to NASA scientists and federally funded researchers under this program since 2018 and the company looks forward to continuing to help power this community’s research of our changing Earth.

Today, researchers funded by U.S. Federal Civilian agencies and the National Science Foundation, including their contractors and grantees, have access to Planet data. That is, hundreds of thousands of scientists can access this space-based data to gain a deeper understanding of the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, changing ecosystems, disaster response and more. With Planet’s global and high-frequency dataset powered by their fleet of 200 satellites, these groups can work to develop potential solutions to complex and ever-evolving sustainability challenges.

“As our world experiences greater biodiversity loss and climate change, it’s more critical than ever that we have the tools in place to power action,” said Robbie Schingler, co-founder and CSO at Planet. “We are eager to see how this group of NASA scientists and federally funded researchers continue to leverage Planet’s data to help us better understand our changing Earth system. Working together, it is our hope that we can better monitor nature and human-led change and avert our planetary emergency.”

In the last year alone, users under the CSDA Program downloaded the equivalent of over five times the entire Earth’s landmass in Planet data, generating a deep repository of information to be used in their studies. From exploring the chronic effects on the world’s food supply due to the war in Ukraine to monitoring harmful sargassum inundation on Florida beaches, tracking walruses driven to shore in Alaska due to climate change, and mapping the spatial extent of the areas affected by wildfires, these researchers are rethinking the possible when it comes to better understanding and protecting Earth’s valuable ecosystems. 

NASA established the CSDA Program to identify, evaluate, and acquire data from commercial sources that support NASA's Earth science research and application goals for societal benefit. Supporting the CSDA program by empowering this community of researchers and scientists to utilize Planet’s satellite data for high impact science is core to the company’s mission of making change visible, accessible and actionable.