SPOT General Overview
The SPOT-5 Earth observation satellite was successfully placed into orbit by an Ariane 4 from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou during the night of 3 to 4 May 2002.
Compared to its predecessors, SPOT-5 offers greatly enhanced capabilities, which provide additional cost-effective imaging solutions. Thanks to SPOT-5's improved 5-metre and 2.5-metre resolution and wide imaging swath, which covers 60 x 60 km or 60 km x 120 km in twin-instrument mode, the SPOT-5 satellite provides an ideal balance between high resolution and wide-area coverage. The coverage offered by SPOT-5 is a key asset for applications such as medium-scale mapping (at 1:25 000 and 1:10 000 locally), urban and rural planning, oil and gas exploration, and natural disaster management. SPOT-5's other key feature is the unprecedented acquisition capability of the on-board HRS stereo viewing instrument, which can cover vast areas in a single pass. Stereo pair imagery is vital for applications that call for 3D terrain modeling and computer environments, such as flight simulator databases, pipeline corridors, and mobile phone network planning.
SPOT-5 Satellite Sensor Characteristics
| Launch Date | May 3, 2002 |
| Launch Vehicle | Ariane 4 |
| Launch Location | Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guyana |
| Orbital Altitude | 822 kilometers |
| Orbital Inclination | 98.7°, sun-synchronous |
| Speed | 7.4 Km/second (26,640 Km/hour) |
Equator Crossing Time | 10:30 AM (descending node) |
| Orbit Time | 101.4 minutes |
| Revisit Time | 2-3 days, depending on latitude |
Swath Width | 60 Km x 60 Km to 80 Km at nadir |
| Metric Accuracy | < 50m horizontal position accuracy (CE90%) |
| Digitization | 8 bits
Pan: 2.5m from 2 x 5m scenes |
| Resolution | Pan: 5m (nadir)
MS: 10m (nadir)
SWI: 20m (nadir)
Pan: 480-710 nm
Green: 500-590 nm |
| Image Bands | Red: 610-680 nm
Near IR: 780-890 nm
Shortwave IR: 1,580-1,750 nm |
Archived and New SPOT-5 Imagery
For many image requests, a matching image can already be located in the archives of SPOT-5 imagery from around the world. If no image data is available in the archives, new SPOT-5 satellite image data can be acquired through a satellite tasking process.
[ SPOT Maps... ]
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