WASHINGTON – Planet Labs received a $12.8 million contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide ocean data and analysis for regions of the Asia-Pacific.
The award, announced on October 16, is part of the agency’s Luno programme. Planet is tasked with providing advanced analytics for maritime operations and reconnaissance, including ship detection and surveillance. Under the deal, Planet will partner with Houston-based geospatial analytics firm, Cinamax Intelligence, to fuse Planet’s almost daily imaging data with Cinamax’s Theia analytics platform – an AI-powered tool that detects and classifies marine events.
“These insights are vital to uncovering illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, illegal ship-to-ship transfers and ship spoofing,” Planet said in a statement.
NGA’s Luno program
The contract falls under Luno B, one of two components of NGA’s broader Luno program – a five-year, $490 million range indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) vehicle designed to accelerate the agency’s adoption of commercial satellite imagery, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics.
Luno is divided into Luno A, which focuses on commercial analytical services powered by machine learning and computer vision, and Luno B, which integrates commercial AI tools directly into NGA’s analytical workflows.
Planet Luno is part of a roster of commercial intelligence vendors competing for the task order. Recent winners also include Maxar Intelligence (renamed Vantor), BlackSky, Electromagnetic Systems, Ursa Space and NV5 Geospatial.
“This is our first win under this program as a major,” said Charlie Candy, Planet’s chief revenue officer, during an Oct. 16 appearance at the company’s investor conference.
maritime domain awareness
Candy said the NGA award underscores Planet’s growing emphasis on maritime domain awareness, a segment driven by national security demands.
“Our satellites image more than 25 million square kilometers of ocean every day and we are expanding this capability,” he said. “The projected increase in demand is primarily driven by national security needs.”
Planet’s constellation – currently about 140 imaging satellites – maps the entire Earth every day, creating an unparalleled collection of data. “We photograph over 200 million square kilometers of land, coastline, open water every day,” Candy said, adding that the company now has a catalog of more than 3,000 images for every location on land.
That repository of imagery feeds Planet’s AI training models, enabling the company to automate detection and monitoring tasks on a global scale. Candy said Planet operates more than 50 ground stations and a fully automated mission control center to downlink and process satellite data in real time.
Partnership with Cinemax
For this Luno B task order, Planet is leveraging Cinamax’s AI analytics to enhance situational awareness at sea. SynMax specializes in combining satellite imagery with artificial intelligence and other multi-source data for the energy and marine industries.
Theia, Synmax’s proprietary analytics platform, classifies ship activities and detects “dark” ships that operate without broadcasting location signals – a growing concern for defense, trade security and environmental regulators.
Planet and Cinemax have a history of collaboration. The companies first partnered in 2022 to provide energy intelligence and dark vessel monitoring for the energy and commodity sectors, using PlanetScope imagery to track hydraulic fracturing and offshore operations. The alliance deepened into a formal strategic partnership in March 2024, allowing Planet to market Synmax’s Theia tool for vessel monitoring and spoofing detection as part of its commercial offerings.
Focus on government customers
Candy said Planet’s sales teams are now primarily focused on government clients, while the company continues to work with analytics partners like SynMax to serve commercial sectors such as insurance, energy, finance and supply chain.
The NGA contract signals a deeper alignment between commercial space data providers and US intelligence agencies, which are increasingly leaning on private sector capabilities to maintain global situational awareness.
