Space Satellite Stocks Plummet 6% After $151 Billion Defense Windfall

Planet Labs PBC (NASDAQ: PL), a space-observation data company, closed at $25.30 on the New York Stock Exchange on the 18th, down 6.57% from the previous session. Trading volume totaled 6.96 million shares, and its market capitalization fell to about $8.0 billion (approximately ₩10.4 trillion), erasing roughly $495 million (about ₩640 billion) in a single day.

On March 3, the company was selected as a prime contractor under the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD multiple-award contract program, which has a ceiling of $151 billion (around ₩196 trillion). This designation positions Planet Labs as a core supplier of global satellite surveillance and AI-powered maritime monitoring data to the U.S. government. In October 2025, it also won a $12.8 million AI-based maritime monitoring contract from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), further expanding its revenue streams from defense and intelligence customers.

Founded in 2010 by former NASA scientists and headquartered in San Francisco, Planet Labs operates hundreds of small and high-resolution satellites that capture daily imagery of the entire Earth. It provides subscription-based data and analytics services across agriculture, climate, disaster response, and defense and intelligence sectors. After going public via a SPAC merger in 2021, the company has been bolstering its government and defense contracts and enhancing its AI analytics capabilities, positioning itself as a leading space-based data and information infrastructure provider.