Vegetation and environment monitoring on a new micro satellite

摘要

VENμS is an Earth observation demonstration mission developed in cooperation between FRANCE and ISRAEL.This dual mission gathers both a scientific mission (earth imaging) and a technological mission (Hall Effect Thruster).The main scientific goal of VENμS is to acquire data over land in order to improve the understanding and modeling of land surface and vegetation processes, and to develop new applications such as water balance, crop yield and carbon fluxes assessments. At least 50 selected sites of interest all around the world will be viewed throughout the duration of the mission.The uncommon features of the VENμS scientific are: 2 day revisit, high resolution (5.3m), spectral richness (12 bands), and constant viewing angles. This unique combination will allow the development of new processing methods in the frame of the European Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Program.The satellite also flies a technological mission which aims at qualifying an electric propulsion technology and demonstrating its mission enhancement for low altitude missions and LEO orbits transfer.This paper presents all the aspects of the VENμS mission: missions' description, missions' implementation, missions' concurrence, ground image processing, ground control segment, satellite and payload descriptions. It details also the cooperation aspects.