Supported Collections
Airbus operates the most comprehensive constellation of optical and radar commercial Earth observation satellites available on the market today. The EODH provides global access to archive data of Airbus optical imagery with 30cm to 1.5m spatial resolution, and radar imagery from 25cm to 40m.
Pléiades Neo. Airbus' most advanced optical satellites with the highest spatial resolution and capacity. Two identical satellites launched in 2021 with seven spectral bands, 30cm native resolution and daily revisit.
Pléiades. Very high-resolution optical satellites with a global archive back to 2012. Two identical satellites with five spectral bands, daily revisit delivering 50cm image products.
SPOT. Efficiently image large areas at 1.5m resolution. Revisit every other day and a global archive back to 2012.
Radar Constellation. Reliably acquires the widest range of radar satellite images, from the highest resolution to wide area coverage - regardless of weather and daylight conditions. Imagery in 6 different imaging modes with a flexible spatial resolution (from 25cm to 40m) and area coverage (footprint). Global mean revisit time < 24 hours, and an archive back to 2007.
Pléiades Neo
Experience the forefront of Earth observation innovation with Pléiades Neo Airbus's leading optical constellation featuring two identical 30cm resolution satellites renowned for their ultimate reactivity. Since its launch in 2021, this innovative constellation has revolutionised the landscape of Earth observation-based services, setting new standards of precision and reliability.
- 2 identical satellites with 30cm native resolution imagery
- Location accuracy: 3.5m CE90
- Reactive tasking, rapid delivery
- Acquisition capacity of 1 million km² per day and daily revisit, anywhere
- Multispectral imagery (including Deep Blue / Red Edge)
- Mono, stereo & tri-stereo acquisition capability
Applications
Pléiades Neo can support many application areas including:
- Defence. Discover a new dimension for achieving geospatial intelligence analysis or critical mission planning.
- Urban, Land Administration and Mapping. Optimum reactivity and accuracy to address today's land administration and city management challenges
- Civil Engineering and Infrastucture. Reliable and precise data supply to support project planning and monitoring of assets
- Oil, Gas, Mining and Energy. Precise and fresh data to optimise project planning and asset exploration, production, and monitoring
- Maritime. Providing reliable data for enhanced maritime surveillance, ensuring safer operations and facilitating swift decision-making
- Agriculture. Offering accurate and precise data to address growing agricultural challenges and meet sustainability demands
Land Administration and Mapping
Mapping very dense urban areas in Mayotte with Pléiades Neo HD15 imagery
As a result of incorporating recent HD15 imagery into their mapping updates, the local authority has been able to rehabilitate substandard housing and relocate households from high-risk areas.
Agriculture
Detection of Vine Rows using Pléiades Neo Imagery
Understanding the inter and intra-plot heterogeneity of vineyards is a crucial issue in ensuring the stability of wine production and income.
Land Administration and Mapping
Precision Mapping of Urban Vegetation using Pléiades Neo Imagery
In 2022, Airbus launched the Pléiades Neo Challenge, a call for projects offering free access to Pléiades Neo imagery.
Pléiades
The identical Pléiades 1A and Pléiades 1B satellites deliver 50cm imagery products with a 20km swath. Their location accuracy and image quality are excellent, making them an ideal source of data for both civil or military projects. The space and ground segment have been designed to provide data in record time, ensuring daily revisit capacity anywhere on the globe and unrivalled reliability when it comes to collecting new images.
- Very high-resolution multispectral twin satellites (50cm products)
- Daily revisit capacity and highly reactive tasking
- Advanced agility including 5 collection scenarios: target, strip mapping, tri-stereo, corridor and persistent monitoring
- Stereo / tristereo capacity and fresh archive
Applications
Pléiades can support many application areas including:
- Defence. Available satellite resource with a true daily revisit capability, enabling routine or intensive monitoring of regional conflicts, border areas, and early detection and prevention of armed conflicts and humanitarian crises. The satellite’s advanced agility is particularly well-suited for updating military maps in strategic areas.
- Land administration. Particularly adapted to urban planning, housing and transportation management, land use mapping (at scales of up to 1:10,000 and 1:5,000), assessing urban sprawl, and monitoring new infrastructure.
- Agriculture. Especially well-suited for monitoring fragmented landscapes, small parcels, experimental micro-plots, and groves/permanent crops, but also for crop yields estimation, irrigation recommendations, agricultural inputs optimization.
- Forest and environment. Valuable tool for running forest inventories and monitoring changes, forest operations (Wood planting, harvesting…).
Defence, Maritime, Mobility and Transportation
Hijacked Tanker Aris 13 Located with the Help of Pléiades
By combining the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the Pléiades satellites, Airbus helped locating the ARIS 13 oil tanker attacked by Somali pirates in only 2 days.
Land Administration and Mapping
Supporting Polio Eradication with help of Airbus Pléiades satellite data
Within the record timeframe of 30 days, an immense area of 50,000km² was acquired with Pléiades in Nigeria.
Agriculture
Simplot develops a scalable system for valuable agronomy
Simplot and Airbus jointly developed a scalable, automated system to collect, process, analyse and digitally display satellite imagery from Pléiades and SPOT 6/7.
SPOT
The ideal solution for country-wide, demanding applications. Designed to efficiently cover huge areas in record time, making it a perfect choice for cartography and monitoring applications.
- 1.5m resolution products, ideal for topographic mapping: from 1:30,000 to 1:7,500 scale maps
- Twin satellites with revisit every other day (SPOT 6 and 71), and a global archive back to 2012.
- Stereo and tri-stereo capacity
- 2D and 3D stereo plotting, geometric accuracy down to 6 to 10m CE90, elevation and contour lines
- 3 Million km² per day, per satellite
Applications
SPOT can support many application areas including:
- Forestry and environment. Detect anomalies in forest texture, identify degradation from unauthorised logging, or measure green corridors and hedges with higher precision
- Maritime surveillance. Conduct ship reconnaissance, covering 100,000 km2 in a single pass, with the flexibility for reactive tasking up to 2 hours before acquisition as well as ultra-fast deliveries
- Agriculture. Access to information inside small parcels <0.05ha, from panchromatic channels to extract textural information and derive biophysical parameters, get an accurate characterisation of crop conditions
- National mapping. Rapid and broad coverage capability minimising seasonal effects on vegetation, and reducing operational costs by requiring less processing work over large areas; feature extraction with up to 1.2m CE90 geometric accuracy, as well as contour lines extraction and stereo plotting
Agriculture
Simplot develops a scalable system for valuable agronomy
Simplot and Airbus jointly developed a scalable, automated system to collect, process, analyse and digitally display satellite imagery from Pléiades and SPOT 6/7.
Security
2018 Hokkaido Earthquake and Post-disaster Monitoring
Japan is constantly under threats from natural disasters. To protect people’s lives and minimise economic losses, the authorities need immediate information from the affected areas.
Maritime, Forestry, Environment, Mobility and Transportation
SPOT enables the detection and monitoring of toxic Gulfweed
The gorgeous island of Martinique in the Eastern Caribbean Sea has been hit by a plague, called sargasse.
Radar Constellation
Radar image acquisition in a unique constellation. The German TerraSAR-X / TanDEM-X satellites are being operated in the same orbit tube and feature identical ground swaths and imaging modes. The satellites carry a high frequency X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor to acquire datasets ranging from very high-resolution imagery to wide area coverage.
- Radar Constellation 'toolbox': Imagery in 6 different imaging modes with a flexible spatial resolution (from 25cm to 40m) and area coverage (footprint)
- Weather and daylight independent site access to any point on Earth
- High agility (rapid switches between different imaging modes and polarisations)
- TerraSAR-X, and TanDEM-X have an orbit repeat of 11 days for InSAR applications, and a global mean revist time < 24 hrs
- Unrivalled geometric accuracy and excellent radiometric accuracy
Applications
Radar Constellation can support many application areas including:
- Geospatial/image Intelligence (GEOINT/IMINT) and analytics, e.g. for Defence and Security
- Emergency response and Mapping as well as change detection, e.g. for crisis management
- Interferometric (InSAR) analysis of ground surface motion in support of OGME and Civil Engineering companies
- Maritime surveillance with large area coverage at unique resolution and near-real-time delivery
Civil Engineering and Infrastructure
