Proba-V, a new camera in space, was launched into orbit May 7 with the mission of recording images of all the vegetation on Earth every two days. Mission managers report this week that the satellite is in good health and the vegetation imager has been switched on.
The first raw image from the orbiting camera was taken over western France on May 15. The superimposed picture is a combination of images taken in red, blue and near-infrared wavelengths. The camera was switched on in time to record vegetation covering the Bay of Biscay.
This mission is being undertaken in order to track deforestation due to fires or climate change. It is also believed that the tiny spacecraft will be able to alert watchers to crop failures on the ground. Measuring less than one cubic yard in size and weighing just 350 pounds, this spacecraft still has a fully-functional redesign of a vegetation imager currently flying aboard two full-size French satellites.
Soon after the launch of the spacecraft from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, controllers went into the first phase of their mission, known as LEOP, for Launch and Early Operations Phase.
Karim Mellab, Proba-V Project Manager said, "The first LEOP milestone was to check [for] the first signs of life from the satellite as it flew over the ESA ground station at Kourou 40 minutes after separation."
Imaging data was analyzed and assembled at the ESA's Redu Centre in Belgium, from where the orbiting Earth observatory is controlled. Proba-V is able to resolve features on the ground as small as 500 to 1,000 feet, depending on the wavelengths at which the camera is recording.
The Proba-V satellite is the fourth in the ESA's Proba series, with the V standing for vegetation. The mission is expected to last between two-and-a-half and five years.
Once calibrations and testing are complete, including testing the new satellite against the older French-run systems, monitoring and control of the flight will be handed over to the ESA's Earth Observation Programme.
Mellab said, "These initial checks are now being followed by a diligent commissioning of every single detail of the overall system platform, instrument and technology demonstration payloads, which will take the next few months."
