Carbonite
SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology)
Low-cost 1m GSD optical Earth observation satellite providing HD colour video from space.
Key figurescomparable across the catalogue
- Mass
- 107 kg
- Data rate
- 400 Mbps
- Design life
- 5 years
Normalised to common units so this product can be compared with others in its category. The supplier's own wording is below.
As published by the supplier
- GSD
- 1 m
- Swath
- 5.5 km
- Spectral bands
- Optical (RGB Bayer)
- Throughput
- >200 images/day depending on GSN
- Reference orbit
- 500 km SSO with 10:30 LTAN
- Mission lifetime
- 5 years
- Launch mass
- 107 kg
- Data storage
- 120 GB
- Downlink
- 400 Mbps
About
Carbonite is a low-cost Earth observation mission providing 1m GSD colour imagery and HD colour video from a 500km altitude orbit. It employs a Forward Motion Compensation (FMC) imaging mode enabling captures of over 120 seconds of a single target. Carbonite-1, launched in July 2015, demonstrated low-cost 1m GSD imagery, and was followed by Carbonite-2 in January 2018, which provided the world’s first commercial HD colour video from space. Applications include change detection, pattern-of-life assessments, humanitarian and disaster management, global high resolution situational awareness, national security, elevation model generation and infrastructure/asset monitoring. A constellation of Carbonite satellites provides high revisit rates and robustness against weather conditions and target concealment.
Documentation
Need the full ICD, test reports or a specific revision? Ask the supplier directly.