Pléiades mission countdown

Episode 5
First Pléiades terminal installed in Sweden
 
 

The first Pléiades terminal arrived in Sweden at Kiruna airport in February.

From there, it was trucked to the Esrange receiving station site 30 kilometres away, where it will be connected to an X-band antenna supplied by the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC).

The transfer took place in glacial conditions at temperatures as low as –25°C.

The Swedish ground segment is the second civil receiving station in the Pléiades system after the station in Toulouse, France.

The Swedish receiving station is operated by Pléiades partner SSC, which is also co-funding the programme to the tune of 3%, in charge of Pléiades image telemetry reception and hosting the ground segment at its Esrange site (our photo).

This partnership gives Sweden the capability to generate image products for its institutional customers.

The SFINX antenna has a span of 7.3 metres. Located north of the Arctic Circle, it is within range of satellites for 10 orbital revolutions a day and for about 100 minutes on each satellite pass.

In comparison, the antenna in Toulouse can only receive data from 5 passes in 24 hours.

The Swedish receiving station thus provides extra responsiveness for Pléiades and the ability to transfer data urgently to Spot Image over a dedicated network.

The ground segment was integrated by Thales Services in Toulouse before being shipped to Sweden. 

In April, it will undergo technical qualification testing by a team from the French space agency CNES, SSC, EADS-DS, Thales Services and Spot Image.

This terminal is identical to those that will be deployed at other receiving stations around the globe.

Pléiades is a new generation of wide-swath (20 km) optical Earth-imaging satellites that will supply colour products at a resolution of 50 cm.

Initiated in 2001, the dual-use Pléiades programme comprises two 1,000-kg satellites phased 180° in the same orbit to provide daily revisits of any point on the globe.

Equipped with innovative, latest-generation space technologies like fibre-optic gyros and control moment gyros, Pléiades-1 (PHR1A) and Pléiades-2 (PHR2A) offer great roll and yaw agility.

They can acquire imagery anywhere within an 800-km ground strip in less than 25 seconds with a location accuracy better than 3 metres, without ground control points and using refined ephemeris data.

 More about Pléiades