One of the Pléiades Neo satellites, at an Airbus facility, before transport to Kourou
Photo by: Airbus
Europe-based global major aerospace group Airbus announced on Wednesday that its first two Pléiades Neo Earth observation satellites had arrived in the French territory of Guiana in South America. There they will be integrated with Vega launch rockets before being launched from the European Space Centre at Kourou.
The two will form part of a four-satellite constellation, all four satellites being identical. The satellites and the constellation they will form, are entirely funded, owned, manufactured and operated by Airbus. Their imagery will be available to customers through Airbus’ digital platform, OneAtlas, which also provides access to archived data and extensive analytics.
The first of the satellites to be launched, next month, will be Pléiades Neo 3, followed a few weeks later by Pléiades Neo 4. Each is equipped with a very high (30 cm) resolution imager, described by Airbus as “a light weight, next generation silicon carbide optical instrument”. Each of them will be able to image 500 000 km2 of the Earth’s surface every day.
“Pléiades Neo is a game changer for Airbus and its geo-intelligence customers,” highlighted Airbus Space Systems head Jean-Marc Nasr. “Thanks to our disruptive and bold investments we can offer a state of the art constellation giving 30 cm resolution imagery in near real-time, opening up a completely new range of applications to give our customers more detail, more quickly.”
The Pléiades Neo satellites also have intersatellite links with geostationary SpaceDataHighway satellites. This will allow them to be rapidly (within 30 to 40 minutes) retasked to respond to urgent requirements.
The four new satellites will operate in the same orbit, and will be able to visit any point on the Earth’s surface at least twice a day. They will reinforce Airbus’ existing fleet of both optical and radar Earth observation satellites.