Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo
Looking this week at the latest EO satellite launches, together with the establishment of a virtual EO constellation.
Earth Observation Satellite Launches
SpaceX’s latest satellite rideshare took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on the 25th May. The Transporter-5 mission put 59 small satellites and other craft into obit on a Falcon 9 rocket. Among the payload were some interesting Earth Observation (EO) missions including:
- Two CICERO-2 (Community Initiative for Cellular Earth Remote Observation) satellites, operated by GeoOptics using GNSS reflections from the atmosphere and surface to calculate atmospheric pressure, temperature, moisture, ocean and ice properties.
- GuardianAlpha is a prototype EO satellite for Aistech Space amd carries a multi-spectral telescope designed with visible, NIR and thermal sensors.
- GHGSat-3, -4 & -5, also known as Luka, Penny & Diako, are Greenhouse Gas Satellite Demonstrators offering hyperspectal SWIR imaging targeted at monitoring greenhouse gases and are operated by GHGSat Inc.
- ICEYE launched five Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites to join its existing constellation, which is now at 21 strong, and offers a ground resolution of one metre, on a 5 sq km swath.
- Sejong-1, South Korea’s first commercial EO satellite, operates alongside a Spire Lemur-2 Cubesat. It offers a 5 m-resolution camera with a temporal revisit time of 90 minutes. The operator, Hancom InSpace Co, hopes to sell imagery and geospatial analytics services to Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
- Satellogic Inc., launched four more optical EO satellites, giving them 26 operational satellites in orbit, with the aim of having a 34 strong fleet within a year from now. The satellites offer imaging with ground resolution of around one metre.
- Umbra-03, which is third satellite in the Umbra-Synthetic Aperture Radar constellation. Operated by American company, Umbra Lab, it has an X-band SAR offering 25 cm resolution over a 16 sq km swath.
- Urdaneta-Armsatis the first Armenian satellite to be put into space. It is an EO satellite with four spectral bands operating on 1.8 m ground resolution and a 14.3 km swath width. It was developed in cooperation between the Armenian state Geocosmos company and the Spanish company Satlantis. Applications for Armenia are expected to include border control, emergency prevention and management, environmental protection, climate-change monitoring, urban planning, road construction, and geology monitoring.
BRICS Virtual Satellite Constellation
In April we reported on the establishment of a data centre in Hainan, China, for the exchange of satellite data, particularly between the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa following an agreement they signed in August 2021 to enhance the sharing of remote sensing data between them. This week it has been reported that a virtual constellation of six existing satellites is in the process of being established, although no timeframe has been confirmed. The six satellites are:
- CBERS-4 which carries four instruments: a multispectral camera; a panchromatic imager; the Infrared Medium Resolution Scanner, and a wide-field imaging camera. Developed jointly by China and Brazil, the imagers offer spatial resolutions up to 20 m, and swath widths of 120 km.
- Russia’s Kanopus-V which is an optical satellite with both a multispectral and panchromatic instruments. The multispectral offers a spatial resolution of 12 m and the panchromatic 2.5 m, both with swath widths of 20 km.
- India’s Resourcesat-2 and 2A are high resolution optical satellites offering a spatial resolution of 5.8m and together offer a revisit time of 2 to 3 days.
- China’s Gaofen-6 offers a panchromatic instrument with 2 m resolution, and hyperspectral imager with 8m spatial resolution.
- China’s Ziyuan III 02 is a high resolution optical satellite also with both multispectral and panchromatic instruments. The multispectral offers a spatial resolution of 6 m and the panchromatic 2.1 m, with swath widths of 51 km.
Both these stories show the continuing development of EO data, both in terms of new satellites and new approaches with a multi-country virtual constellation.
