Satellite data provider Planet announced Tuesday that it plans to launch a new fleet of orbiting eyes so powerful they can distinguish road markings on the ground.

Planet, which already operates 200 Earth observation satellites from space, wants to make the new function available in 2023.

The new satellites, called Pelican, could be used for mapping services, such as Google maps; in environmental tasks, such as spotting illegal forest clearers or observing crops; and in defense to monitor troop movements and airport activity.

"The data is faster, it's higher resolution, it's lower latency, it's more on demand," Robbie Schingler, a former NASA engineer who co-founded Planet in 2010, told AFP. "It's a whole new satellite."

The announcement, made at the company's annual conference, underlines the dynamism of the booming nanosatellite market.

NASA, along with the European Space Agency, is developing a campaign to return the Martian samples to Earth.

On Sept. 1, NASA's Perseverance rover unfurled its arm, placed a drill bit at the Martian surface, and drilled about 2 inches, or 6 centimeters, down to extract a rock core. The rover later sealed the rock core in its tube. This historic event marked the first time a spacecraft packed up a rock sample from another planet that could be returned to Earth by future spacecraft.

Mars Sample Return is a multi-mission campaign designed to retrieve the cores Perseverance will collect over the next several years.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft is encapsulated in a protective fairing atop an Atlas V rocket, awaiting its 23-day launch window to open on October 16.