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I'm a LANDSAT fan to the extreme. But I suspect that Planet will step up and provide a (subscription based) alternative, at zero up-front cost to the US Government. Over short time horizons, this is cheaper. Over long ones ... who knows?

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I think the main thing is the US government doesn't want to subsidise anyone studying it. Sure even without LandSat hardware the US Government can get the data from Planet and dozens of other commercial EO constellations, for free from ESA's Sentinel programme and random academic and small country CubeSat projects. But will they?

The “Planet” being L3harris/peter theill?

https://www.planet.com/

I couldn't find anything that suggests where their major profits (≈ major income) would come from. I assume finance: Hedge funds? Insurance industry?

Are government and science users just secondary sources of income?

I'm fairly sure government is a primary consumer, up there with hedge fund types. They do some primary analysis, but the big market is in "processed" data, if I understand it correctly, so people will buy this data wholesale, hook up a subscription API, and feed it directly into their analysis pipelines.

https://www.planet.com/company/customer-stories/

Government users includes the defence sector...

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