Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo
On Sunday, 3rd May, SpaceX launched its latest rideshare mission, from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on a Falcon 9 rocket that was carrying 45 satellites on board. As usual with these rideshare missions, there were several Earth Observation (EO) payloads worth highlighting:
Main EO Satellite
The main EO payload was South Korea’s Next Generation Medium Satellite 2, also known as CAS500-2, and also referred to as KompSat Next 2 that was placed into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 528 kilometres. It was developed by Korea Aerospace Industries and is a high-resolution optical satellite. It offers a ground resolution of 2 metres in multispectral mode, and 0.5 metres in panchromatic mode. The satellite was due to be launched in 2022 on a Russian Soyuz rocket, but was delayed due to the war with Ukraine. It’s companion CAS500 1 was launched in 2021. According to the Korea AeroSpace Administration, the data will be used for land and resource management, mapmaking, urban planning and ground change detection, and is also expected to support the observation of and response to natural disasters, including typhoons, heavy snowfall, floods and wildfires. After calibration and validation activities, the satellite is expected to become operational later this year.
Other EO Satellites Launched
The other EO payloads onboard included:
- Three Pelican satellites for Planet Labs, namely Pelican’s -7, -8, and -9. These high-resolution optical satellites are optimized for land imaging with a ground resolution of 50 centimetres. As the names suggest they follow six other Pelican satellites, the majority of which were launched last year, with the original Pelican -1 launched in 2023.
- Five EarthDaily EO satellites for Canadian company Earth Daily Analytics, numbered -2, -3,-4,-5, and -6. These satellites offer data across 12 Visible and Near-Infrared, two Short-Wave Infrared bands, and two thermal infrared bands at 5 metre spatial resolution.
- Four Hellenic Fire System satellites for Greece’s wildfire detection and tracking system, offering continuous, real-time wildfire intelligence across 100% of Greek territory marking a world first for this type of national satellite capability. Developed by German company OroraTech, they each carry two infrared imagers operating in the midwave and longwave infrared spectral bands.
- Two X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites for ICEYE, supporting both Finland’s ICEYE constellation and also Greece’s Hellenic Fire System program.
- Seven satellites for Italy’s IRIDE programme, offering multi-spectral imagers and computers for on-orbit image processing. Data is used for applications including land use, coastal protection, precision agriculture and defense.
- Balkan-2: Developed by Bulgaria’s EnduroSat this CubeSat to contributes to the Balkan extension of the Copernicus program.
- RAVEN: A microsatellite the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) (ICARUS) 2.0 system to track global wildlife and biodiversity.
- Eycore-1: An X-band SAR satellite developed by Poland-based Eycore focused on maritime applications. Its data is expected to be used for applications such as continuous vessel monitoring, detection of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, surveillance of offshore infrastructure and environmental monitoring.
- BusanSat: An ocean observation CubeSat developed for the city of Busan, South Korea, to measure the amount of fine dust particles and super thin clouds in the marine atmosphere with a spatial resolution of 388 metres.
Conclusion
Rideshare missions are always exciting as they often launch several CubeSats which can show potential applications and approaches, and gives an insight into the way the sector is innovating and progressing
