Artist’s rendition of a satellite – paulfleet/123RF Stock Photo

As we begin the New Year we thought we’d look at some of the satellite launches that the Earth Observation (EO) community should be watching out for in the coming twelve months.

Possibly the most anticipated launch will keep us waiting the entire year, with Landsat-9 planned for in December 2020 – although, with the potential for delays whether it sneaks into this year or is early in 2021 remains to be seen.

The first EO satellite of the year is likely to be next week with both China and India planning launches. On current expected dates, the Chinese launch will be a day or so ahead of the Indian one. The Chinese launch will comprise of:

• Jilin-1 Kuanfu-01 – An extension of the existing Jilin constellation owned by Chang Guang Satellite Technology Company carrying a hyperspectral imager with a 5 m spatial resolution, and a high definition video.
• NuSat-7 and NuSat-8 – Latest two Argentinean EO satellites in the Aleph-1 constellation, which have visible and infrared sensors with a spatial resolution of around 1m.

Whereas the Indian launch will be:

• GISAT 1 (GEO Imaging Satellite) is a geostationary satellite providing continuous observation of the Indian sub-continent, to support monitoring of natural hazards and disasters. It carries a multispectral sensor with spatial resolutions of 50 m for the Very Near Infra-Red band, 1.5 km for the Long Wave Infra-Red band and the visible bands with resolutions of 192 m and 320 m. It will image the entire area every 30 minutes.

India will be active through the year with other launches including:

• Radar Imaging Satellite 2 (RISAT 2A) planned for March, and RISAT 1A also expected to launch later in the year.
• Cartosat 3A and Cartosat 3B in quarters 1 and 2 respectively.
• Oceansat-3 is also planned for 2020, and will provide continuity from Oceansat-2 with the provision of global ocean colour data and sea surface temperatures. Oceansat-3A is also planned is expected to be launched soon after, which may be in 2020 or 2021.

Other interesting launches during the year to pay attention to include:

• Jason-CS (Jason Continuity of Service) or Sentinel 6radar altimeter mission is a continuation of the existing partnership for Jason-3. It will be the reference mission of the Ocean Surface Topography constellation and will provide continuity of data for the Jason dataset. It is planned for launch in November.
• Ingenio in February is the first Spanish EO satellite built by a consortium of industries of the Spanish space sector. It’s an optical imager with 2.5 m spatial resolution for the spectral bands and 10 m for panchromatic.
• SAOCOM-1B is another Argentinean satellite, it is planned for March and will be the second in a pair of L-Band SAR satellites, with SAOCOM_1A been launched in 2018. It offers spatial resolutions ranging from 7 m to 100 m, and is a joint mission with ESA as it will operate as part of the COSMO-SkyMed constellation which between them will enable twice-daily coverage.
• Resurs-P4 is Russian EO satellite planned for November and has a 216 channel hyperspectral imager with a spatial resolution of 1.0 m in panchromatic mode and a resolution of 3 to 4 m in colour.
• BlackSky Global 5, 6, 7 and 8 are 1 m resolution EO microsatellites that will join the existing four-strong constellation, which will be on the first mission of India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle expected towards the end of the first quarter.
• Capella Space will launch multiple SAR satellites during the year with an X-Band SAR instrument that can provide high spatial resolution sub metre data. The ambition is to have a 30 strong constellation to provide a service to various customers, including the US Military.

In addition to these, there will be a number of other EO launches during the year, particularly CubeSats, including further launches for Planet’s Flock constellation. We hope to keep you informed of these during the year.

Finally, although not EO, it is worth noting that this could be the year that sees hundreds of the broadband satellites go up with both Starlink and OneWeb planning multiple launches of 60 satellite constellations.

There is plenty to look forward to for the Space Industry, and despite recent growth in satellite launch numbers, 2020 could set the record for the sheer number of satellites launched in a single year. So that’s our first prediction of the year!