Cristina Hodgson
THE SEOSAT-Ingenio satellite is the first 100% Spanish satellite that will ‘monitor’ the state of the Earth’s soil, water and air as well as the pollution of cities from space.
SEOSAT-Ingenio is a strategic project of the Spanish Government, aimed at raising the technological level of Spanish industry and providing advanced Earth observation services to civilian, institutional and administrative users, with a preference on observation over Spanish territory.
The launch has taken place early this Wednesday morning, at 2:52 from Kourou in French Guiana.
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The project, initially led by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, was delegated, because of it’s for its programmatic management and financing, to the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), which represents Spain before the European Space Agency (ESA) and other global space agents,
The Government funding for this project, which began in 2008, is around €200 million.
According to the head of the CDTI’s Aerospace Programmes, Jorge Lomba, ‘this is the first time that Spain has designed, developed and operated a complete space system’.
However, the satellite will not focus solely on home ground, as its areas of interest also include Europe, North Africa and Latin America.
It is expected that the satellite’s cameras will cover 2,500,000 square kilometres per day, or five times the area of Spain, taking up to 600 images a day.
The resolution of the cameras is such that they will be able to distinguish a euro coin from 10 kilometres away.
This high-resolution will provide valuable images for cartography, land use monitoring, urban development and land water management.
The satellite is expected to position itself in a Sun-synchronous orbit, at an altitude of 670 kilometres, and begin spinning over the Earth at a frequency of just over 14 times a day.
