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CO3D
To succeed the stereoimaging capability provided by the Pleiades satellites, CNES has conceived the CO3D programme to deliver geographic data covering the entire globe in three dimensions. To be able to map a zone of interest in 3D, four satellites are required to rapidly acquire imagery from different inclinations and track potential changes.
Each CO3D satellite will carry a unique optical instrument with a spatial resolution of approximately 50 cm in the red, green and blue visible bands and in the near-infrared. After processing on the ground, their data will yield 3D maps of all of Earth’s land surfaces in the form of a digital surface model (DSM) with an elevation resolution of approximately one metre. DSM production will cover some 25 million square kilometres annually, a rate unrivalled anywhere in the world at this level of accuracy. DSMs will be used by the military and by civil society, as well as opening up new commercial prospects for start-ups and established firms alike. The entire globe is expected to be covered in five years and for certain categories of user—like glaciologists, snow scientists or geologists—zones of interest will be remodelled every few months.
On 8 July 2019, CNES awarded the CO3D contract to Airbus Defence & Space, which is currently building the satellites around a new spacecraft bus weighing about 300 kilograms and equipped with electric thrusters for in-orbit manoeuvres and a new generation of reaction wheels offering a high degree of agility. The instruments will use new optics to acquire imagery and offer the ability to pre-process it on board and then downlink it to ground at very high data rates.
Contact
Lionel Perret : lionel.perret at cnes.fr
Laurent Lebegue : laurent.lebegue at cnes.fr
