SPOT: The First Operational Remote Sensing Satellite

Abstract

The first SPOT satellite will be launched in October, 1985. SPOT 2, identical to SPOT 1, will be available for launch in early 1987. They will open a new era in land remote sensing with a clear operational objective featuring a worldwide commercial distribution network.

The SPOT satellites will produce images of the earth’s surface at 10 m sampling intervals in the panchromatic mode, and at 20 m sampling intervals in the multispectral mode. Imaging can be made either along the vertical, or off-nadir to provide repetitive coverage or stereo pairs for altitude determination. In addition, a variety of image preprocessing and processing levels will be available according to the user needs.

The many innovative features of the SPOT system, combined with an efficient distribution organization, responsive to market requests, should provide the user community with high value information in a wide range of application areas. Preliminary results have already been obtained from the many SPOT simulation data collected in Europe, West Africa, Bangladesh and the United States. They confirmed that in such fields as topographic and thematic mapping, forest inventory, crop production statistics, urban planning, engineering and geology, the SPOT images may very well replace high altitude aerial photography.

Combining a lower price on a square kilometre basis and a higher information content (radiometric accuracy), ready for digital processing, they will gradually be accepted by the user community in these various areas, provided that a clear prospect of system coninuity is available.