Session
Swifty Session 1
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL), is a vertically integrated space and data company, and a leading provider of daily Earth data and insights; we design, build, and operate the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. We have built and launched over 500 satellites by pioneering the agile aerospace philosophy that encourages rapid prototyping and iteration on the hardware, and building a minimum viable flight software to launch the satellites into space. This allows us to use space as a testbed and extension of the development environment as quickly as possible. Further software development occurs after the satellites are in space, and new features are progressively brought online to customers as the software matures. Planet's 3U Dove satellites were built with this approach in mind and over the last 10 years there have been 15 hardware iterations and ten times as many software iterations.
Pelican, the next-generation follow-on to SkySat, is a category-defining satellite constellation that is designed to deliver responsive, rapid, very-high-resolution data to our customers. This new constellation has been developed using this agile development process. We have focused on rapidly creating and integrating a prototype, and then evolving it with software updates over time to deliver satellites with relatively short design cycles. Prior to delivery for launch, the focus is on developing and validating a minimum viable product (MVP) with a base level of capability that enables reliable communication, security, and over-the-air reprogrammability. All low-level interfaces and devices are confirmed working but await a later software update to fully enable those features.
Planet launched our first successful Pelican Tech Demo (Pelican-1) on Transporter 9 in November. Within the first orbit, we made first contact and got critical telemetry. Since then, we have successfully commissioned and enabled multiple subsystems via more than 70 software updates (many of them in the first few months). In this paper we discuss the core software features that must be tested early in the program, what features can be delayed until later, and how we triage various needs to safely and incrementally improve the spacecraft post-launch.
Planet's Agile Software Development for Spacecraft
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL), is a vertically integrated space and data company, and a leading provider of daily Earth data and insights; we design, build, and operate the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. We have built and launched over 500 satellites by pioneering the agile aerospace philosophy that encourages rapid prototyping and iteration on the hardware, and building a minimum viable flight software to launch the satellites into space. This allows us to use space as a testbed and extension of the development environment as quickly as possible. Further software development occurs after the satellites are in space, and new features are progressively brought online to customers as the software matures. Planet's 3U Dove satellites were built with this approach in mind and over the last 10 years there have been 15 hardware iterations and ten times as many software iterations.
Pelican, the next-generation follow-on to SkySat, is a category-defining satellite constellation that is designed to deliver responsive, rapid, very-high-resolution data to our customers. This new constellation has been developed using this agile development process. We have focused on rapidly creating and integrating a prototype, and then evolving it with software updates over time to deliver satellites with relatively short design cycles. Prior to delivery for launch, the focus is on developing and validating a minimum viable product (MVP) with a base level of capability that enables reliable communication, security, and over-the-air reprogrammability. All low-level interfaces and devices are confirmed working but await a later software update to fully enable those features.
Planet launched our first successful Pelican Tech Demo (Pelican-1) on Transporter 9 in November. Within the first orbit, we made first contact and got critical telemetry. Since then, we have successfully commissioned and enabled multiple subsystems via more than 70 software updates (many of them in the first few months). In this paper we discuss the core software features that must be tested early in the program, what features can be delayed until later, and how we triage various needs to safely and incrementally improve the spacecraft post-launch.
