Deimos-1 represented the first Spanish Earth Observation satellite. Launched in 2009, with an expected lifetime of 10 years, it collects a 650-km swath of 3-band, 22-m resolution imagery at 10 bits. Its three spectral bands (R,G,NIR) are similar to Landsat’s to assure continuity with existing tools and harmonization with historical data; a synthetic blue band can be generated to produce natural-color imagery. With this satellite, Elecnor Deimos was able to set-up a complete system for Earth Observation data provision, the company’s first step to becoming a qualified satellite systems provider and operator.
Deimos-1 is currently owned and operated by Deimos Imaging, an UrtheCast company.
Deimos-1 has a collection capacity of more than 5,000,000 km2/day, with 3-day average revisit time worldwide. It is the Spanish member of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), and it is one of the world leading sources of medium resolution data, having provided yearly coverages of Sub-Saharian Africa to the European GMES/Copernicus program since 2010, and one cloud-free coverage of the United States every two weeks to USDA during the crop season since 2011.
A 2-station ground segment, with antennas in Boecillo (Spain) and Svalbard (Norway) is a key asset of the Deimos-1 system, allowing to command the satellite and to download data at each orbit (i.e. every 100 minutes). A very advanced mission planning system, developed in-house, allows the optimization of large coverage campaigns, including multi-satellite tasking.
