Abstract
Abstract. PLEIADES is the highest resolution civilian earth observing system ever developed in Europe. This imagery program is conducted by the French National Space Agency, CNES. It operates since 2012 a first satellite PLEIADES-HR launched on 2011 December 17th, a second one should be launched by the end of the year. Each satellite is designed to provide optical 70 cm resolution coloured images to civilian and defence users. The Image Quality requirements were defined from users studies from the different spatial imaging applications, taking into account the trade-off between on-board technological complexity and ground processing capacity. The assessment of the image quality and the calibration operation have been performed by CNES Image Quality team during the 6 month commissioning phase that followed the satellite launch. These activities cover many topics gathered in two families : radiometric and geometric image quality. The new capabilities offered by PLEIADES-HR agility allowed to imagine new methods of image calibration and performance assessment. Starting from an overview of the satellite characteristics, this paper presents all the calibration operations that were conducted during the commissioning phase and also gives the main results for every image quality performance.
Highlights
TO PLEIADES-HR SATELLITEThe PLEIADES program is a space Earth Observation system led by France, under the leadership of the French Space Agency (CNES)
The Image Quality requirements were defined thanks to users surveys from the different spatial imaging applications, taking into account the trade-off between on-board technological complexity and ground processing capacity. Since it was successfully launched on December 17th, 2011, Pleiades 1A high resolution optical satellite has been thoroughly tested and validated during the commissioning phase led by CNES
The main one uses stars [3] and [8] acquired for different adjustments of the refocusing system made of a thermal control of the telescope’s secondary mirror position. It allows to measure by the way a very accurate 2D assessment of the MTF, (Fig. 3) as the Point Spread Function (PSF) is the image of a point-like source of light as seen by the instrument [5]
Summary
The PLEIADES program is a space Earth Observation system led by France, under the leadership of the French Space Agency (CNES) It will operate in 2012 two agile satellites designed to provide optical images to civilian and defence users. The Image Quality requirements were defined thanks to users surveys from the different spatial imaging applications, taking into account the trade-off between on-board technological complexity and ground processing capacity. Since it was successfully launched on December 17th, 2011, Pleiades 1A high resolution optical satellite has been thoroughly tested and validated during the commissioning phase led by CNES. New brand methods have been applied taking advantage of the platform agility
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