Vessel Detection

Vessel Detection provides automated identification and monitoring of maritime vessels, enabling tracking of shipping activities, maritime surveillance, and ocean management.

Seeing Beyond the Horizon

The global maritime domain is the lifeblood of our world. It accounts for approximately 90% of international trade, serves as a primary food source for billions of people, and is crucial for global energy production. However, monitoring this vast and complex environment is an immense challenge. With over 100,000 ships at sea at any given time, traditional surveillance methods struggle to keep up.

Governments, maritime agencies, and commercial stakeholders have long relied on cooperative tracking systems, such as the automatic identification system (AIS) and radio frequency (RF) signals. While useful, these systems have a critical flaw: they rely on vessels choosing to broadcast their location.

Nefarious actors, from potentially illicit fishing fleets to smugglers and hostile military vessels, can simply turn off their transponders, becoming dark ships that vanish from conventional monitoring systems. Dark ships leave critical gaps in situational awareness, making it nearly impossible to:

• Detect potentially illegal activity in sovereign waters
• Monitor strategic chokepoints for security threats
• Effectively combat illicit fishing and activities that impact the environment
• Efficiently deploy expensive patrol aircraft and ships

Persistent, Non-Cooperative Monitoring From Space

Planet addresses this challenge through our automated Vessel Detection product, which provides a foundational layer of truth for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). We leverage the unprecedented power of our PlanetScope® constellation — the world's largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites — to deliver ongoing automated vessel detection over vast ocean areas, on a near-daily basis.

Unlike AIS, satellite image-derived vessel monitoring is non-cooperative. It does not matter if a vessel is broadcasting its location or not. If it is on the surface, we can see it. This capability transforms MDA from a reactive search to a proactive, persistent monitoring mission, enabling users to see the complete picture of activity at sea and focus their resources where they matter most.

Planet's unique ability to scan enormous areas of the ocean on a near-daily basis unlocks critical new capabilities for a wide range of use cases.

National Security and Border Protection

Navies, coast guards, and border agencies face the challenge of monitoring vast maritime territories, including exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Planet Vessel Detection delivers automated surveillance that spots dark ships and other threats, giving agencies the power to:

• Detect and track vessels of interest operating under emissions control (EMCON).
• Prioritize and cue high-value assets, such as patrol aircraft and ships, directly to suspicious activity, thereby maximizing their effectiveness and reducing operational costs.
• Establish a pattern-of-life understanding in high-interest areas, making it easier to spot anomalies that signal potential threats.
  

Planet’s Unique Approach. No other commercial provider offers near-daily electro-optical coverage at the scale required for meaningful national security monitoring. Our ability to scan over 20 million sq km of ocean provides the tip-off that other systems miss.

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing

IUU fishing is a multi-billion-dollar illicit industry that threatens global food security and marine ecosystems. These operators frequently go dark to avoid detection while engaging in illegal activities like fishing in protected areas or conducting illegal ship-to-ship transfers.

• PlanetScope near-daily imagery and automated detections can pinpoint vessels operating in marine protected areas or regions where fishing is prohibited.
• Our revisit rate allows analysts to identify potential transshipment events at sea, a key indicator of IUU fishing, by detecting vessels loitering in close proximity.
  

Planet’s Unique Approach. The PlanetScope constellation's near-daily revisit and broad area coverage are ideal for the persistent monitoring required to catch fleeting illegal fishing activities in remote ocean regions far from effective patrol routes.

API Information

API	Available	Notes
Data API	✅	Customers can use the Data API to query imagery associated with standard or enhanced vessel detection
Orders API	✅	Customers can use the Orders API to order imagery associated with standard or enhanced vessel detection
Subscriptions API	✅	Customers can use the Subscriptions API to subscribe to imagery associated with standard or enhanced vessel detection
Analytics API	✅	The Analytics API is used to query vessel detection results