Spot Image - exclusive
civil and commercial operator
of the Pleiades satellites

Spot Image signed a delegated public service agreement on 15 January, after the French space agency CNES, making it the official and exclusive worldwide distributor of data from the Pleiades satellites.

With the Pleiades constellation of 2 very-high-resolution satellites—Pleiades-HR1A and Pleiades-HR1B—Spot Image will bring you 50-cm imagery with a ground footprint of 20 km x 20 km.
 

• daily revisits to any point on the globe
• 50-cm products
• 4 spectral bands (blue, green, red and infrared)
• imaging swath of 20 km at nadir
• single-pass collection of mosaics with a footprint of 100 km x 100 km
• near-real-time stereo and tri-stereo acquisition with a 20 km x 280 km footprint
• daily coverage of 1,600,000 sq.km.
• exceptional image location accuracy, better than 7 m without ground control points (CE90) for optimal integration in a GIS 
   
   

Thanks to its great agility, Pleiades will ensure a minimum of tasking conflicts to better meet all users’ needs.
And to give you even more responsiveness, we will be uploading satellite workplans 3 times a day. 
 
This means users in all of the world’s major regions will be able to submit requests for imagery only hours before acquisition by the Pleiades satellites. This unique tasking system will be operated through 3 ground stations in the Kerguelen Islands, Kiruna (Sweden) and Toulouse (France). 
 
 

Pleiades will offer rapid revisits to any point on the globe:

• In 2 days with 1 satellite
• Every day with 2 satellites
   

Data acquisition:

• 450 images per day, per satellite on average
• 1 acquisition mode:
  Simultaneous panchromatic + multispectral acquisition.

Agility: 

• Roll :
  - 5° in 8 seconds
  - 10° in 10 seconds
  -  –30° to +30° in 25 seconds
• Along-track stereo and tri-stereo viewing
• Single-pass mosaic collection

The diagram below shows the satellite’s ability to image a crisis point in a single pass. The results are obtained with a maximum authorized viewing angle of 20°.

Real-time imaging capability

• A crisis theatre of operations might cover:
  > 30 spots of a diameter of 20 km
  > Over an area of interest of 100 km x 200 km 
  
   

One of the main innovations of Pleiades is its ability to acquire high-resolution stereo imagery. Stereopairs are collected in a single pass, which means a uniform product is quickly available. 
 
As shown below, in addition to “standard” stereopair collection—2 images with an adjustable base/height (B/H) ratio—the system offers a tri-stereo acquisition capability with an extra near-nadir view to give you an image with full stereoscopic detail.

Pleiades’ great agility also affords the ability to extend its imaging swath artificially and instantaneously. 

The table below shows imaging swaths that can be achieved according to the user-defined sensor viewing angle.