Photo: Satellogic

Satellogic detailed plans for its next-generation ‘Merlin’ satellites, designed to provide one-meter resolution. The company said that Merlin will be differentiated by its ability to provide daily mapping of the entire planet, with one-meter spatial resolution. 

Satellogic is moving quickly to deploy Merlin, with the first satellite scheduled to launch in October of this year, with full operational capability expected in the first half of 2027.

Satellogic currently offers monitoring capabilities with its Aleph Observer product. The next-generation satellites will increase capability for site monitoring from thousands of monitored sites to millions, the company said. The company also explained one-meter resolution allows analysts to identify “meaningful activity” on the ground, like the presence or absence of monitored objects, aircraft movement, vehicle activity, and infrastructure changes. 

“Merlin is designed to solve a fundamental limitation in Earth observation,” said Emiliano Kargieman, CEO and co-founder of Satellogic. “Until now, organizations had to choose between global coverage at low resolution or high-resolution monitoring of a limited number of sites. Merlin removes that trade-off and enables persistent monitoring at planetary scale.”