Satellite Spectra Land in the GIS Desktop

A geologist with ArcGIS Pro can now connect to a Tanager STAC catalog, pull down a scene and start working with it immediately. Esri says that is the point of ArcGIS Pro 3.7, which can reach the Tanager and Wyvern catalogs directly. No conversion step, no third-party viewer.

The timing matters because the supply of imagery is about to widen. Planet's Tanager-2 captured first light over Spain on October 7, six days after its October 1 launch. At the same moment, mineral exploration budgets are tight. New Space Economy, relaying the International Energy Agency, reports that global exploration spending fell by more than 10% in 2025, which puts pressure on teams to spend field programs where they will count. Orbit-to-desktop screening is meant to help with that, and the software now makes it routine rather than a specialist project.

What the desktop does now

Esri's ArcGIS Pro 3.7 became available on May 14, 2026, according to the company's ArcGIS Blog. Esri says the release adds raster types for Tanager and Dragonette imagery from Planet and Wyvern. Analysts can load a hyperspectral product and its associated products from a single HDF5 file using predefined templates, or build mosaic datasets to manage multiple scenes across a study area.

The analysis tools matter more than the plumbing. Esri says continuum removal, a technique that normalizes spectra and highlights absorption features, was previously available only within geoprocessing tools. It now sits inside the interactive Spectral Signature Viewer in ArcGIS Pro 3.7. A geologist can click a pixel and see the absorption features, with no batch job in between.

Other new tools handle the data volume. Reduce Spectral Bands supports PCA for general dimensionality reduction and MNF for noise reduction and better signal separation, Esri says. Extract Spectra From Image builds spectral libraries directly from imagery using field observations, so a team's own sample points can train the screening. In the Band Arithmetic raster function, Esri says, ArcGIS Pro automatically selects the closest matching bands for wavelength-enabled expressions, removing the need to look up band indices by hand.

Esri's mining blog, "Top 10 GIS Mining Workflows In Exploration", points the same direction. It advises using multispectral or hyperspectral imagery and DEM derivatives to map alteration and surface indicators, and it frames prospectivity as a transparent, repeatable way to combine evidence and decide where to look next.

The data behind it

Planet says Tanager-1 launched in August 2024 and covers the full 380–2500 nm VSWIR range at roughly 5 nm resolution. New Space Economy puts the system at about 426 spectral bands at 30-meter pixel spacing. Planet says Tanager-2, built with Carbon Mapper, will roughly double its hyperspectral monitoring capacity, and it has listed rare earth element exploration among the applications the satellite aims to support. The company plans at least three more Tanager satellites after it.

"Seeing first light from Tanager-2 just six days after launch is a proud moment for the team." said James Mason, Planet's Chief Space Officer. He added that a larger constellation would let partners widen missions from global methane detection to biodiversity tracking to mineral prospecting.

Access has tiers. Planet released over 50 Tanager basic radiance datasets to its Open Data STAC under a CC BY 4.0 license, but those images are georeferenced, not orthoprojected. Custom acquisitions are another matter: Planet's FAQ says direct tasking typically requires a commercial agreement, and its high-resolution tasking sits in paid plans. A junior explorer can practice on open scenes. Pointing the satellite at a specific prospect costs money.

What 30 meters cannot see

The clearest test of the method is a 2024 study using Germany's EnMAP satellite, New Space Economy reports. It mapped neodymium at California's Mountain Pass rare-earth district at 30-meter pixel resolution. The researchers detected diagnostic absorption features near 740 and 800 nanometers, then validated the anomalies against laboratory spectroscopy, surface geology and higher-resolution imagery.

The same publication is blunt about the limits. The study does not mean a satellite can look through kilometers of rock and reveal an underground orebody, it writes. What the instrument detected were surface expressions of a mineralized system. A narrow vein, it adds, may vanish inside a mixed 30-meter pixel even when the instrument covers the right wavelength.

Wavelength coverage also separates the offerings. New Space Economy notes that Pixxel's Firefly does not cover the shortwave-infrared wavelengths used to distinguish many clay and hydroxyl alteration minerals, a gap to weigh when comparing commercial sensors. Government supply is also in flux. NASA permanently shut down ASTER's thermal-infrared subsystem on January 16, 2026 because of power constraints on Terra, the publication reports. Europe's CHIME-A is planned around 2028, with CHIME-B around 2030 to 2031. Landsat 10 is expected in 2031 with 26 bands, against 11 on Landsats 8 and 9. Commercial hyperspectral imagery has to carry the load until then.

Help writing the scripts

Esri is also trying to lower the scripting barrier. Its ArcGIS Pro assistant can perform supported in-application actions, answer documentation questions and generate code, including ArcPy scripts and SQL query layers. Starting with 3.7, the beta is open to all eligible ArcGIS Online named users, with no invitation. Esri cautions that arcpy.mp and arcpy.sharing support is limited when generating ArcPy snippets, so anyone automating map production should check the output. Esri's release post from May 2026 says beta testing for ArcGIS Pro 3.8 begins in September.

The workflow is now in place: catalog, mosaic, continuum removal, band reduction, a spectral library built from field samples. What it produces is a ranked list of surface anomalies, not drill targets. Somebody still has to walk out to the outcrop and decide whether the pixel is a deposit or a coincidence.