Planet satellite imagery captured on March 25, 2026 over Alice Springs, Australia. Photo: Planet

Planet recently performed AI-driven object detection directly onboard a Pelican-4 satellite, using the satellite’s onboard Nvidia Jetson Orin module. 

Planet shared details on Tuesday of the recent tech milestone. On March 25, Planet’s Pelican-4 satellite captured an image of the airport in Alice Springs, Australia, and used the Nvidia Jetson Orin module to run an AI model onboard the satellite, which detected airplanes in the image. 

Planet says this is one of the first times an Earth imaging satellite has gone beyond data capture to onboard AI inference and analysis. The company says it sets the stage for a capability it calls planetary intelligence, in which satellites use AI models to understand, anticipate and reason about what is being observed, in real time. The company said these onboard models are in their early stages and will continue to be refined.

Planet’s Pelican satellites  are equipped with Nvidia Jetson graphics processing units. The company’s next-generation Owl satellites, announced in October, will also have Nvidia GPUs to perform AI processing in orbit. 

“This success is a glimpse into the future of what we call Planetary Intelligence at scale,” said Kiruthika Devaraj, vice president of Avionics & Spacecraft Technology. “By running AI at the edge on the Nvidia Jetson platform, we can help reduce the time between ‘seeing’ a change on Earth and a customer ‘acting’ on it, while simultaneously minimizing downlink latency and cost. This shift toward integrated AI at the edge is a technological leap.”