Launched during the night of 16 to 17 December 2011 on a Soyuz vehicle from Kourou (French Guiana), the French Space Agency CNES’ Pléiades 1A satellite has unveiled its first images.
Designed and built by Astrium for CNES, Pléiades is a very high resolution dual-use observation system for civil and military users.

One of Pléaides 1A’s most notable qualities is its exceptional acquisition capability – being highly agile it is able to capture imagery through 360° and produce stereo image cover. Pléiades 1A will supply imagery at a resolution of 70 cm which will then be processed on the ground to achieve a robust 50 cm resolution suitable for further processing for numerous geo-information applications.
The military images produced by the satellite will be directly received by military mission centres, while those for civil users will be received by Astrium Services – the sole civil distributor – at its ground stations.
[Excerpts from CNES website]
Images © CNES
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