[SatNews] The transporting of satellites occurs regularly and is a delicate dance of moving an object that is heavy and big that houses delicate equipment…
Pléiades 1B, the second dual-use, very-high-resolution satellite in the Pléiades family built by Astrium for the French space agency CNES (prime contractor for the system and system architect), has left the Astrium Satellites facilities in Toulouse en route for its launch site in French Guiana in late November.
Pléiades 1B will join its twin, Pléiades 1A, to form the first constellation of very-high-resolution satellites on the same orbit able to offer a daily revisit of the same point.
Pléiades 1B will be lifting off at the end of November 2012 on board a Soyuz launch vehicle from the Sinnamary site at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG).
Pléiades 1B will be joining its twin, the Pléiades 1A satellite, which has given full satisfaction since its launch last December, at an altitude of 695 km in the same quasi-polar heliosynchronous orbit. Like its twin, Pléiades 1B will provide 50-centimeter products over a 20-kilometer footprint to the French and Spanish defense ministries, civil institutions, and to private users through Astrium Services, the exclusive distributor of Pléiades products for the civil market.
The Pléiades satellites offer major operational advantages to users thanks to their incomparable image acquisition capabilities (up to 900 images/day, daily revisit of a point anywhere in the world) combined with remarkable agility (rapid pointing), which makes it possible to image points out to 1500 km either side of nadir in multiple acquisition modes (stereo, mosaic, corridor, target).
Find more on Pléiades here :
Astrium is the sole European company that covers the whole range of civil and defence space systems and services.
