EO

Planet Launches Planetary Variables

By Ryan Duffy
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Planet (NYSE:PL) yesterday announced Planetary Variables, a new analytics product that spans three preprocessed data feeds: 

  1. Soil Water Content: daily observations of the amount of water in soil at 5cm depth at 100m resolution
  2. Land surface Temperature: “Accurate, continuous insight” into surface temps at 100m resolution
  3. Vegetation Biomass Proxy: Daily crop biomass data at 10m resolution 

Oh hey VanderSat: Planet completed its ~$28M acquisition of the Danish startup in December. VanderSat uses space agency data to provide specialized water and crop health analytics products. 

  • “When one combines their new data with Planet’s, the value is far greater than the sum of its parts,” Planet CEO Will Marshall said last November. 
  • Planetary Variables is “based on the scientific expertise of VanderSat,” Planet says on its new product page for the data feeds. 

Payload takeaway: Planet continues to move “up the stack” to analytics and lean into the agriculture vertical, in part assisted by M&A.

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