February 14, 2017, 19:58 PST

Today Planet successfully launched 88 Dove satellites to orbit—the largest satellite constellation ever to reach orbit. This is not just a launch (or a world record, for that matter!); for our team this is a major milestone. With these satellites in orbit, Planet will reach its Mission 1: the ability to image all of Earth’s landmass every day.

Tonight is the culmination of a huge effort over the past 5 years. In 2011 we set ourselves the audacious mission of imaging the entire Earth land area every day. We were convinced that armed with such data, humanity would be able to have a significant positive impact on many of the world’s greatest challenges. We calculated that it would take between 100-150 satellites to achieve this, and we started building them. After today’s launch, Planet operates 149 satellites in orbit. We have reached our milestone.

It’s taken a minor Apollo project to get here! Behind the scenes we’ve miniaturized satellites; learned how to manufacture them at scale; constructed the world’s second largest private network of ground stations; custom built an automated mission control system; created a massive data pipeline able to process the vast amount of imagery we collect; and developed a software platform that lets customers, researchers, governments and NGOs access imagery quickly. Each of these has been a significant undertaking in and of itself—and together it represents a major systems engineering project. This is not to mention the non-engineering efforts from raising capital, receiving regulatory licenses, booking launches, and building a base of hundreds of partners that use the data to solve their needs.

Without a doubt, the single largest driver behind this record-breaking success is the unrelenting dedication of the Planet team. We’ve been humbled by them for the last five years and we thank them today.

Next up: getting this data to our customers and to those who need it the most! But for now Planet is having a great start to the year worthy of a little celebration.

—Will & Robbie

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Here are some additional facts and figures regarding this launch: