The award follows the launch of Tanager-2 on October 1, 2026. Within a week of launch, Planet captured and released the satellite’s first light image, which revealed its spectral capabilities and detected a methane plume over Spain’s Costa Blanca. Planet points to that rapid capture and publication as evidence of the platform’s operational readiness and ability to deliver actionable environmental data.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement, NASA will acquire Tanager data covering more than 250,000 square kilometers, drawing on both recent archive imagery and newly tasked coverage. The evaluation will assess two data products derived from Tanager’s Dyson-type imaging spectrometer: Level 1C, measuring top of atmosphere reflectance, and Level 2A, measuring bottom of atmosphere surface reflectance. The instrument measures radiance across more than 400 contiguous spectral channels at 30-meter resolution, and its data products are structured to support use with existing NASA algorithms and modeling frameworks.<\/p>\n
The assessment will focus on Tanager’s value across Earth science focus areas including atmospheric composition, biodiversity, hydrology, geology, and rapid response to dynamic events such as wildfires and floods. A core objective is faster science, processing complex hyperspectral observations into research-ready datasets delivered directly through Planet’s APIs.<\/p>\n
“NASA’s CSDA program continues to pioneer novel pathways for commercial innovation to serve the scientific community,” said Robbie Schingler, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder at Planet. “Hyperspectral data holds immense potential for understanding our changing planet, but realizing that potential depends on how quickly and effectively scientists can put it to work. By making rich spectral data available to researchers, NASA is enabling new approaches to solve pressing environmental challenges. This evaluation will help train a whole new cadre of scientists whose results will inform future government users and commercial applications.”<\/p>\n
Schingler framed the evaluation as a way to broaden access to hyperspectral data and support new environmental research. The NASA assessment runs alongside an independent evaluation by the U.S. Geological Survey focused on on-orbit performance and calibration accuracy. Planet says these evaluations provide information it uses to support data quality, scientific integrity, and cross-agency collaboration. The company is also enabling data availability through OpenSTAC standards and recently launched the Tanager Open Data Competition, allowing researchers and developers worldwide to explore and build applications using the data.<\/p>\n
At the conclusion of the evaluation, NASA will publish a comprehensive report detailing the data quality, utility, and potential for broader integration across Earth science research initiatives. That report will help inform decisions on whether to make Tanager data available to the federally funded scientific community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The award follows the launch of Tanager-2 on October 1, 2026. Within a week of launch, Planet captured and released the satellite’s first light image, which revealed its spectral capabilities and detected a methane plume over Spain’s Costa Blanca. Planet points to that rapid capture and publication as evidence of the platform’s operational readiness and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}