US satellite imagery company Satellogic has announced a new upcoming constellation called Merlin.

Merlin is designed to provide daily remapping of the entire planet at one-metre resolution, with the first satellite due for launch in October 2026 and full operational capability expected in the first half of 2027.

Satellogic’s view is that daily global coverage at one-metre spatial resolution is not available in Earth observation systems today, so it hopes the new constellation will enable new applications by giving organisations the ability to monitor activity continuously and cost-effectively on a planetary scale.

“Until now, organisations had to choose between global coverage at low resolution or high-resolution monitoring of a limited number of sites,” said Emiliano Kargieman, CEO and Co-Founder of Satellogic.

“Merlin removes that trade-off and enables persistent monitoring at planetary scale.”

Persistent monitoring

According to Satellogic, Merlin is designed to significantly expand the capabilities of Aleph Observer, the company’s recently announced persistent monitoring product.

Aleph Observer enables organisations to monitor hundreds to thousands of locations; Merlin will extend that to an unlimited number of sites, such as ports, airports, border crossings, and critical infrastructure.

“Aleph Observer was designed to enable persistent monitoring,” said Kargieman.

“Merlin expands that capability from thousands of monitored sites to millions, allowing customers to move from periodic observation to continuous awareness.”

Military grade monitoring

The new constellation will combine several capabilities to support its operating model.

• Daily global remapping at one-metre resolution
• 10 spectral bands aligned with Sentinel-2
• AI-first onboard processing of every pixel for classification, object detection and identification
• Real-time communications and intelligence alerting

Instead of purchasing imagery scene by scene, customers will be able to subscribe to persistent monitoring coverage across networks of locations.

“With Merlin empowering Aleph Observer, Earth observation moves beyond collecting satellite images,” said Kargieman.

“It becomes continuous intelligence. We are building a persistent global intelligence infrastructure.”