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Artist’s rendition of a satellite – 3dsculptor/123RF Stock Photo

This week we’re going to be looking at potential highlights the rest of this year offers in terms of remote sensing satellite launches, and it looks like it could be a very exciting few months!

As October is already a third of the way through, we’ll start by reviewing the remote sensing satellites already launched this month.

Remote Sensing Satellite Launches In October

• 1^st October – Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket successfully completed a test flight and delivered three satellites into orbit, these were:
  • Serenity developed by Teachers In Space and is carrying various data sensors and cameras to allow educational experiments in space.
  • PicoBus Deployer from Libre Space had five picosatellites onboard including the FossaSat-1B from the Spanish company Fossa Systems which will test communications and remote sensing technology and has a low-resolution imaging camera.
  • TechEdSat-15 (TES-15) is an experimental satellite from the NASA’s Ames Research Centre.
• 7th October – The GAZelle satellite was launched by Rocket Labs carrying the Argos-4 Advanced Data Collection System (A-DCS) supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Data and Rescue Services Program. It joins a number of our Argos instruments which collect data to improve understanding of the planet’s environment, weather, climate, biodiversity and ecosystems, together with helping maritime security, offshore pollution, and humanitarian assistance.
• 8^th October – The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S), also known as Kuafu-1, was launched by China from a Long March 2D rocket. It will use three instruments to measure the solar flares, coronal mass ejections and the sun’s magnetic fields to improve space weather predictions.

Remote Sensing Launches Scheduled For 2022

There are a number of exciting remote sensing satellites scheduled for launch during the remainder of the year. Of course, we can’t be certain how many of them will actually be successfully launched given the myriad of things that can go wrong including launch delays – a number of these satellites have already been significantly delayed due to the pandemic and other reasons. However, we are looking forward to the following highlights:

• October: Oceansat 3 – The third of the Oceansat missions which are built, launched and operated by the Indian Space Research organisation, and focus on collecting oceanography and atmospheric data. The satellite will be carrying a number of instruments including:
  • Ocean Colour Monitor with 13 spatial bands and having a spatial resolution of 360 m and a swath of 1400 km.
  • OSCAT-3 – A Ku-Band scatterometer with a ground resolution of 50 km Ă— 50 km focusing on wind data.
  • Sea Surface temperature Monitor at 1 km resolution.
  • Argos -3 Advanced Data Collection System (A-DCS) similar to GAZelle above.
• October & December: WorldView Legion 1, 2, 3, & 4 – These are scheduled for a pair of launches in October and December respectively, with a further pair launched in 2023. They represent the next generation constellation for Maxar with a minimum spatial resolution of 30 cm in panchromatic mode. They will have 16 spectral bands including 8 multispectral bands with 1 m resolution, and 8 shortwave infrared bands. Once the six satellite constellation is operational, it will offer up to 15 revisits each day.
• November: Pleiades Neo 5 and 6 – These are final the two satellites to complete the Airbus Pleiades Neo constellation. These satellites offer spatial resolutions of 30 cm in panchromatic mode, and 1.2 m in the six band multispectral mode.
• November: UK and Cornwall’s Inaugural Satellite Launch – We discussed this last week.
• December: Meteosat 12 (MTG-I1) is the first of Meteosat’s third generation satellites and has two instruments onboard:
  • Flexible Combined Imager has 16 spectral bands and operates at a spatial resolution of between 1 and 2 km.
  • Lightning Imager will continuously monitor 80% of the planet for lightning, allowing storms to be detected earlier.

These are by no means the only remote sensing satellites being launched during the rest of the year, there are lots of exciting cubesats also in the pipeline, and we’ll highlight some of those as their launch date arrives. These highlights show how exciting the next few months could be for the industry!