PROBA-V, a vegetation satellite

The SPOT/VEGETATION mission is going to its end and ESA, CNES and industry investigated the possibility of proposing a "VEGETATION like instrument" onboard a satellite based on the PROBA concept and design. The studies have demonstrated that due to the recent advances in miniaturization technology, this objective can be reached without losing compromising quality with respect to the SPOT/VEGETATION Instrument. The resulting PROBA-V mission aims at ensuring continuity to SPOT/VEGETATION products, providing daily images at low resolution over the world. The instrument consists of Three-Mirror-Anastigmatic (TMA) cameras (to cover the 2250 km swath width), each equipped with blue, red, near-infrared and short-wave infrared detectors. As a passive thermal control method is used, a thermo-elastic model is used in the user segment on-ground to correct for the geometric and radiometric properties. While for this ESA project, Verhaert Space is responsible as prime for the instrument, VITO acts as prime for setting up and running the user segment, including geometric and radiometric calibration. Special attention is placed to dealing with the different noise characteristics, viewing angles and ground sampling distance of the detectors. The Ground Segment and the User Segment will exploit the satellite capabilities, receiving, processing, archiving and disseminating Primary products, for advanced users and corrected Synthesis for the common Vegetation end users at 1000m and 250m spatial resolution. However, in the end a more agile, area and power efficient satellite system is designed that gives equal and in many parameters better performance than the current SPOT/VEGETATION Instruments.