Planet Labs has announced a new, scaled structure for their Education and Research (E&R) Program, aiming to increase global accessibility to their satellite data and services. Starting today, the program offers a new packaging model with a tiered global pricing system and high-resolution SkySat data, a first for a university program in the satellite data industry.

Launched in 2017, Planet's E&R Program is nearing its sixth year of operation. The program was designed to provide opportunities to students, researchers, and professors from accredited universities to access the company's satellite data and services for their unique research needs.

As of this December, researchers from more than 1,000 universities across more than 100 countries are accessing Planet's data through the E&R program, including Rutgers University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, University of Toronto in Canada, and Yamaguchi University in Japan.

To continue this global momentum, Planet has upgraded this program to operate with a three tiered pricing system. A university campus will now be offered a package price based on the economic context of their country. This change aims to create opportunities for universities around the globe to obtain affordable satellite data, thereby further increasing the diversity of research generated by Planet's unique satellite data and lending insights to the world's most pressing questions.

"Our goal is to get Planet's data into the hands of as many researchers and young scientists from around the world as we can. We believe that this increased accessibility will stimulate novel discoveries about our changing natural world and complex social systems," said Joe Mascaro, Director, Science Strategy and Programs. "As the backbone of geospatial research, students and academics demonstrate innovative analytical approaches for industries around the world, and we are excited to see how this upgraded program will open new doors."

Additionally, the E&R Program is expanding Planet's satellite services to users, offering broad access to archive data from their high-resolution SkySat constellation. This will be a first-of-its-kind service for the program and enable researchers to explore the world with high-resolution (50 cm) imagery, and review data that was captured at the same location multiple times a day. This enhanced offering will allow researchers to monitor daily experiments with fine details and observe data on swiftly changing events, such as volcanic eruptions.

To date, Planet's Education and Research Program users have demonstrated some of the most innovative use cases for Planet's satellite data, and the sheer diversity of projects has showcased the value of the program.

For example, curious researchers leveraged Planet satellite data to monitor thawing permafrost in Tibet, map urban forests in the United States, model the impacts of the war in Tigray on Ethiopian marketplaces, and simulate potentially hazardous lava flows in Eritrea. Further projects have ranged from monitoring urban air quality in India and kelp forests in California to cultural heritage sites in Azerbaijan and rice fields in Japan.

In the last year, the E&R Program has also seen an increase in multi-university integrated research projects, including a program focused on monitoring Canadian boreal forests and their biodiversity through the University of Alberta, Yukon University, and the University of Calgary. And in September, the E&R Program announced a multi-year contract with Saint Louis University in support of the Taylor Geospatial Institute (TGI), a leading geospatial research collaborative in the midwestern United States focused on agriculture and security.

Each day, researchers are advancing human knowledge by asking daring scientific questions and exploring Planet's datasets. Planet's data has now contributed to >2,500 academic publications in 10 different languages since 2016. This number includes users from their Education and Research Program, their NICFI Satellite Data Program, their acquisition of VanderSat, and Planet's partnerships with NASA and DLR.

In the last year alone, approximately two papers were published per day using Planet data. With this newly scaled Education and Research Program, Planet is expecting these numbers to continue to grow and advance our understanding of this world.

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