13/11/2021
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Ahead of its liftoff, scheduled for on Tuesday 17 November 2021 at 02:52 CET (16 November 22:52 local time in Kourou), the SEOSAT-Ingenio satellite sealed in the rocket fairing has been hoisted into the Vega launch tower at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Since the satellite arrived at the launch site in September, it has been put through a series of tests, fuelled and encapsulated within the two half-shells of the rocket fairing, which protects it during the first part of the launch.
SEOSAT-Ingenio, the new Spanish high-resolution land imaging mission, carries a state-of-the-art dual camera that can image Earth’s land with a resolution of 2.5 m. The satellite will benefit society through numerous disciplines such as cartography, agriculture, forestry, urban development and water management.
While SEOSAT–Ingenio is a Spanish national mission, it is the result of an international collaborative effort. The mission is funded by Spain’s Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, but developed by ESA in the context of the European Earth Observation Architecture.
Other partners include Airbus Defence and Space, being the prime industrial contractor of the satellite, and SENER & INDRA, responsible for the payload and ground segment.
Information from SEOSAT–Ingenio will be used by different Spanish civil, institutional and government users, but also potentially by other European users in the framework of the European Union’s Copernicus programme and the Group on Earth Observations’ Global Earth Observation System of Systems.
The mission is set for liftoff on Tuesday 17 November 2021 at 02:52 CET (16 November 22:52 local time in Kourou) along with the French space agency CNES’s Taranis satellite.