Dove Satellite

The Dove is Planet’s 3U CubeSat Earth observation satellite, the workhorse of the world’s largest constellation of optical imaging satellites. Manufactured in volume using lean engineering principles, each Dove spacecraft weighs approximately 4 kg and carries a 90mm optical telescope imaging the Earth at 3–4 m ground sample distance in red, green, blue, and near-infrared spectral bands.

The constellation maintains 150+ active Dove satellites in sun-synchronous orbit at approximately 475 km altitude, enabling daily imaging of the entire landmass of Earth — an unprecedented revisit rate at this resolution scale. This temporal density makes the Dove constellation uniquely suited for change detection across agriculture, forests, urban development, disaster response, and environmental monitoring, where the ability to compare consecutive days matters more than the highest possible resolution.

Doves are manufactured using a philosophy of rapid iteration (‘iteration over perfection’), with successive hardware generations (Dove Classic, Dove-R, Dove Next) incorporating improved optics, signal-to-noise ratio, and downlink capacity. Individual satellites are designed for limited operational lifetimes, with the constellation maintained through regular replenishment launches. Dove data is accessible through Planet’s API, third-party analytics platforms, and the NICFI (Norway’s International Climate and Forests Initiative) program that provides free access to tropical forest basemap data.