Planet Labs Berlin Factory: Europe Scales Sovereign Earth Observation

Europe Is Building More of Its Space Infrastructure at Home

Europe’s push for greater control over strategic space capabilities is moving from policy to production. On September 22, Planet Labs opened a new satellite manufacturing facility in Berlin that will produce its next-generation Pelican Earth-observation satellites. The plant can scale to 60 spacecraft per year, making the development important not only for Planet, but for Europe’s growing market for high-resolution imagery, intelligence, and sovereign satellite infrastructure.

What Planet Is Building in Berlin

The new facility covers approximately 5,700 square meters and combines satellite manufacturing and testing with engineering, mission operations, imagery processing, and other business functions. Planet expects production to begin this autumn, with the first Berlin-built Pelican scheduled for completion before the end of 2026.

The spacecraft themselves are significant. Planet describes the new Pelicans as roughly 300-kilogram-class satellites capable of collecting very-high-resolution imagery. The company is developing the constellation for rapid tasking and low-latency delivery, allowing customers to request imagery of specific locations and receive updated information quickly.

That capability can serve civilian markets such as agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, insurance, disaster management, and environmental monitoring. But demand is increasingly coming from governments and security customers that need frequent intelligence about activity on the ground.

Planet currently operates around 200 satellites, according to the company, making it one of the world’s largest Earth-observation operators.

Why Europe Wants Local Satellite Capacity

The strategic significance is larger than the factory itself.

European governments increasingly want access to satellite systems that can be manufactured, operated, tasked, and supported within Europe. Dependence on foreign intelligence or satellite infrastructure can become a vulnerability when geopolitical conditions change.

Germany has made this issue particularly important. Its government announced plans to invest around €35 billion in military space capabilities through 2030, including satellite communications, reconnaissance, early-warning systems, resilient infrastructure, and secure access to space.

Planet’s Berlin expansion fits into that environment. More than 30% of Planet’s global workforce is already based in Europe, while ground stations in Germany, the UK, Norway, and Iceland downlink nearly half of its global satellite data, according to the company.

The new facility adds another layer: manufacturing.

That distinction matters. Space sovereignty is not only about owning satellites. It depends on controlling enough of the value chain—from spacecraft production and launch to ground infrastructure, data storage, mission operations, and analytics—to continue operating when external dependencies become constrained.

From Selling Images to Selling Satellite Capacity

Planet’s business model is also evolving.

Traditionally, Earth-observation companies sold imagery or subscriptions to data. Governments increasingly want something closer to dedicated infrastructure.

Earlier this month, Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior awarded Planet a contract giving federal authorities access to dedicated high-resolution satellite tasking, nationwide mosaics, geospatial analytics, and a platform hosted on European cloud infrastructure. The agreement can reach €25 million over five years.

This represents an important shift in the downstream space economy. Customers are moving from simply purchasing individual images toward buying persistent access, priority tasking, analytics, and dedicated satellite capacity.

For satellite operators, that can create longer-term and more predictable revenue. For governments, it provides greater control over when and where satellites collect data.

A German-Built Satellite on a German-Built Rocket

The industrial strategy extends into launch.

Planet plans to launch one of its first Berlin-built Pelican satellites aboard Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket in early 2027. Planet and Isar Aerospace have said the mission would combine a satellite manufactured in Germany with a launch vehicle also manufactured in Germany.

That connection illustrates how an ecosystem develops: satellite manufacturing creates demand for launch; launch companies support domestic spacecraft operators; ground infrastructure turns satellite signals into usable information; and analytics companies convert those data into economic value.

Europe’s challenge is therefore no longer simply to develop individual space technologies. It is to connect them into a competitive industrial system.

What Comes Next for European Earth Observation

Planet’s Berlin factory affects satellite manufacturers, defense and civil agencies, launch providers, geospatial analytics companies, investors, and the wider European aerospace supply chain. It shows how Earth observation is evolving from a data service into strategic digital infrastructure.

If this topic is of interest, you can learn more about Earth observation, satellite manufacturing, European space sovereignty, geospatial intelligence, and downstream space markets in the Master in Space Economy by the Space Economy Institute. Discover more about the Master and explore how satellite infrastructure is reshaping the global space economy.