Auriga

Auriga is an advanced Earth observation microsatellite developed by Dauria Aerospace, co-funded by the Skolkovo Foundation (150 million rubles awarded to subsidiary “Dauria – Satellite Technologies” in September 2014), Dauria itself (160 million rubles), and VEB Innovations (60 million rubles invested in June 2015). Originally targeted at up to 50 kg, the design was optimized down to roughly 20 kg at the preliminary design stage. The satellite is built on a CubeSat 16U form factor bus and provides high-resolution optical Earth imaging: up to 3-meter resolution panchromatic and up to 6-meter resolution multispectral, using a filter set covering visible light and near-infrared. With a wide 24 km swath width, Auriga can image entire large cities and transport networks in a single pass, supporting applications such as urban monitoring, agricultural and forest surveillance, vehicle counting/traffic analysis, and parking occupancy assessment. Auriga is intended as the lead satellite of a planned constellation of 10+ spacecraft that would provide weekly revisit imaging of major cities within 45 degrees latitude, with a larger constellation enabling multiple daily revisits for both government/enterprise and end-consumer applications (traffic congestion, air quality, etc.).