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Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo

The last week has been a busy for Earth Observation (EO) satellites, with launches across the world. Listed below is our pick of the latest EO satellites to go into orbit.

Chinese Satellite Launches

A group of four PIESAT-2 EO satellites were launched on Saturday, 9^th November, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the Long March 2C rocket. The PIESAT satellites carry an interferometric synthetic aperture radar including both active and passive X-band SAR satellites and are built by Galaxy Space. This group will mainly provide commercial services, with applications for the data including as environmental monitoring, urban planning, disaster response, and agricultural management, and will be used for both commercial and governmental use.

The following day, 10^th November, the Chinese commercial rocket, Lijan-1, also took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and put fifteen satellites into near-polar orbits. These were:

• Jilin-1 Gaofen 05B & Jilin-1 Pintai 02A – These are two high resolution EO satellites for the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co. Ltd company. The Gaofen-05B is a technology demonstrator satellite, and Pintai-02 is a high-resolution optical satellite.
• Yunyao-1 numbers 31-36 – These carry long-wave infrared camera payloads to provide meteorological data for the Tianjin Yunyao Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd company.
• Xiguang-1 satellites 04 and 05 – This pair of satellites are China’s first commercial high-resolution methane detection satellites. The 04 satellite has a methane camera, a chlorophyll camera and a multispectral camera, while 05 has a hyperspectral camera and a panchromatic camera. They were developed for the Xi’an Zhongke Xiguang Aerospace Technology Company.
• Omani IRSS-1/OL-1 – an EO optical satellite developed through the China Great Wall Industry Corp.
• Tianyan-24 – an optical EO satellite developed by Juntian Aerospace.
• Shiyan-26 satellites, A, B and C – no information is available on these satellites.

Russian Satellite Launches

The Russian Soyuz-2.1 rocket was launched on Tuesday November 5^th from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome and put over 50 small satellites into orbit. Some of the key EO highlights of this launch included:

• Two Russian Ionosfera-M satellites: These are for monitoring the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere. The satellites are in a circular sun-synchronous orbits at an altitude of approximately 510 miles. They are the first two of an anticipated four-strong constellation, with the next two satellites expected to be launched next year.
• Two Iranian built satellites: Kowsar is a high-resolution EO imaging satellite, with data to be used for applications including agriculture, natural resource monitoring, environmental monitoring, and disaster response; the other is Hodhod-1A, a communication and internet-of-things satellite.
• ZimSat-2: Zimbabwe’s second EO satellite. It was designed and manufactured by the Zimbabwe National Geospatial & Space Agency, in collaboration with Russia’s Southwest State University. The data will be used to support agriculture, weather forecasting, climate change monitoring, urban planning, and mineral exploration.
• Politekh-Univers 1 and 2 (Polytech-Universe 1 and 2): A pair of Russian CubeSats developed by the Higher School of Applied Physics and Space Technology of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications to monitor the level of electromagnetic radiation on the Earth’s surface.
• HyperView-1: A Russian hyperspectral satellite reportedly carrying a hyperspectral camera with up to 300 spectral channels and a spatial resolution of between 6 and 13 metres.
• Vladivostok-1: A Russian CubeSat aiming to study solar radiation in different parts of the planet.

Taiwan & Japan’s Satellite Launch

Also on Tuesday 5^th November, the first jointly developed CubeSat by Taiwan and Japan was taken up to the International Space Station (ISS) onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The ONboard Globe-Looking And Imaging Satellite (Ongliaisat) will be launched from the ISS in approximately one month, and its name (onglia) means pineapple in Taiwanese. It will test new high-resolution data collection and image compression technologies with a spatial resolution of 2.8 metres.

Conclusion

The number of EO satellites launched in the last week alone demonstrates why the industry is rapidly growing and why it is exciting to be part of this community.