SPOT 6 declared “good to go”

The brand new SPOT 6 was officially declared “good to go” after the  completion of technical commissioning. All  functions and performance are nominal, in some cases even exceeding specifications. SPOT 6 is a new sensor from Astrium capable of providing satellite imagery at 1.5m resolution with a swath width of 60km at nadir. It will provide Automatic orthoimages with location accuracy of 10 m CE90 using Reference3D

The sensor’s agility has been thoroughly tested; with scenarios including imaging large areas in a single pass (e.g. 500km x 150km), consecutive long strip acquisitions (e.g. 1500km in 3 North-South segments) and target acquisitions (e.g. more than 15 scenes -60km x 60km- over a same point in one pass).

The system is now fully operational, with daily acquisitions averaging very close to the maximum capacity of 3 million square kilometers. The system has successfully downlinked images on 4 passes over the Toulouse station and 8 passes over the Kiruna station. In the last 2 months, SPOT 6 imaged more than 100 million square kilometers without even operating at full capacity!

The satellite is acquiring high-quality imagery and the initial feedback from customers has been excellent. The ground system is going through final adjustments, as well as operational workflow, in a nominal mode for the start of commercial operations in the coming weeks.

So in our next update you can expect to hear about the official commercial availability of SPOT 6 data!

SPOT 6 Satellite Image of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia. SPOT 6 provides images at resolution of upto 1.5m. © 2012 Astrium Services