Sourcery with Molly O'Shea · Nov 9, 2026 · 39m · 32m saved
With Will Marshall, Co-Founder and CEO of Planet Labs
Photo: TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Planet Labs has built about 700 satellites in 15 years, more than any company except SpaceX. Will Marshall, co-founder and CEO of Planet Labs, told Molly O'Shea on Sourcery, during a tour of the company's San Francisco factory, that the whole fleet cost less than one typical NASA satellite.
A traditional imaging satellite was the size of a double-decker bus and cost at least a billion dollars. Planet builds its satellites from consumer electronics and runs the result as a data business.
"We have the largest earth imaging fleet. It's about 10 times larger than anyone else. And most importantly, it images about a hundred times more area than any other commercial actor." — Will Marshall
Will worked at NASA before Planet, and its founders built their first satellites on nights and weekends while some of them still worked there. The tour starts at the whiteboard from the original garage.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 39 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 numbers that matter.
Key Takeaways
All 700 of Planet's satellites cost less than a typical NASA satellite
A $500 phone held most of what a satellite has, which set Planet's cost strategy
Will puts the cost cut at about a thousand-x
Planet is a data business with very high margins, not a hardware company
A Dove takes about 8 hours to build, against 8 years at NASA
The Owl constellation will carry 10 times more data per unit area
About 100 million debris objects share orbit with about 10,000 working satellites
Will says a 100% satellite success rate means Planet has not pushed hard enough
1. 700 Satellites in 15 Years
The tour opened in the room where Planet keeps its early hardware, from the years when the founders built satellites in a garage.
Planet's entire fleet cost less than one typical NASA satellite
"We've built about 700 satellites here in the last 15 years. That is more satellites than any other company on the earth except for SpaceX. All 700 of our satellites cost less than a typical satellite at NASA." — Will Marshall
Legacy satellites routinely cost upward of a billion dollars, and some NASA missions ran to $10 billion. Planet mass-produces small units at a fraction of that.
