Artist’s rendition of a satellite – paulfleet/123RF Stock Photo
Planet deployed nine of its SuperDove Earth Observation (EO) imaging satellites, known as Flock 4e, on Monday 2nd November 2020. They were launched via the Electron rocket from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula, which is on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The satellites were successfully put into a 500 km sun-synchronous orbit, and join the existing SuperDove constellation that provide medium-resolution imagery of between 3 and 5 m spatial resolution, across eight spectral bands.
Launched alongside the SuperDove’s was the CE-SAT-2B experimental microsatellite owned, developed and built by Canon Electronics. It is equipped with a telescope and two cameras:
- Super high sensitivity camera with a ground resolution of approximately 5.1 m expected to take night images of the planet; and
- Secondary optical camera with a ground resolution of approximately 5 m.
China, unsurprisingly, has also been active with launches in the last week. On the 26th October they launched three Yaogan-30 reconnaissance satellites for the Chuangxin-5 (CX-5) constellation. These were put into approximate 600 km orbits by the Long March 2C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in the Sichuan province of China, which has recently undergone a refurbishment to improve its launch capabilities.
This is the seventh group of Yaogan-30 satellites to be launched, which were developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Small Satellite Centre. However, very little information has been released about their capabilities. Forming a rapid revisit constellation, they are believed to satellites for military users and offer optical and radar imaging, together with electronic intelligence.
A fourth satellite was also on board the rocket, Tianqi-6, that is described as a low-orbit internet-of-things communication satellite operated, which is also carrying a camera for educational purposes.
Whilst these are recent launches, India has announced a launch planned for ten satellites this coming Saturday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on board the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The main payload will be India’s EOS-01 EO satellite. An X-band SAR satellite, previously known as RISAT-2BR2, which is intended to support applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management. It will join RISAT 2B which was launched in May 2019, and RISAT 2BR1 launched later in the year in December.
The remaining nine satellites are for commercial customers, but are understood to be:
- Four KSM (Kleos Scouting Mission) satellites for Kleos Space. These are the first in what is hoped to be a twenty strong constellation for geolocating maritime radio transmissions to support monitoring of drug and people smuggling, illegal fishing, and piracy, and support rescues at sea.
- Four Lemur-2 satellites for Spire which join the existing Lemur-2 constellations and are used to provide data for meteorology and ship traffic tracking.
- The M6P-2 is the final satellite on the mission for Lithuanian NanoAvionics, which is small cubesat EO satellite with passive microwave sensors on board.
Finally, we’ve also had a couple of announcements for future EO satellites this week.
- Colombian Air Force (FAC) announced it has awarded a contract for the design, development, testing and operation of the FACSAT-2 EO nanosatellite to GomSpace. It follows FACSAT-1, which was launched two years ago, and offers optical imagery with a spatial resolution of 30 metres.
- United Arab Emirates announced the MBZ-SAT which will follow KhalifaSat as the second satellite to be developed and built within the country. It is reported that it will be a high-resolution commercial satellite offering sub-metre resolution, with a fully-automated image scheduling and processing system on-board. It is scheduled for launch during 2023.
