Proba: an Esa Technology Demonstration Mission with Earth Imaging Payload. First Year of in Orbit Results

ESA’s Proba micro-satellite, launched on October 22, 2001, is in an elliptical 600 km LEO Sun-synchronous orbit. Principally meant for the in-orbit evaluation of new spacecraft technologies and satellite operational autonomy, Proba is also being employed as a flight opportunity for a range of Space Environment and Earth Observation instruments, to take advantage of the pointing and agility capabilities of this small gyro-less platform. Proba’s onboard automatic functions include all payload operations scheduling and execution of high-level requests from users. Proba’s main Earth imaging payload, CHRIS, used to measure directional spectral reflectance, is capable of imaging the same target at several different sensor view angles in up to 62 spectral bands simultaneously across the 415-1050 nm spectral range, with a spectral resolution of 5-12 nm, a spatial resolution of approximately 17 m at nadir and a swath width of 14 km. In addition to CHRIS, the HRC is a monochromatic camera with a miniaturised Cassegrain telescope, having 5 m geometrical resolution, a field-of-view of 0.504 deg and a 1024x1024 pixel CCD detector. Proba users to date include more than 60 Earth observation Principal Investigators within Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The mission, initially intended as a technology demonstration to last one year, has been extended for another year for Earth Observation purposes.