3 research outputs found
STAR-BASED METHODS FOR PLEIADES HR COMMISSIONING
PLEIADES is the highest resolution civilian earth observing system ever developed in Europe. This imagery program is conducted
by the French National Space Agency, CNES. It has been operating since 2012 a first satellite PLEIADES-HR launched on 2011
December 17th, a second one should be launched by the end of the year. Each satellite is designed to provide optical 70 cm
resolution colored images to civilian and defense users.
Thanks to the extreme agility of the satellite, new calibration methods have been tested, based on the observation of celestial bodies,
and stars in particular. It has then been made possible to perform MTF measurement, re-focusing, geometrical bias and focal plane
assessment, absolute calibration, ghost images localization, micro-vibrations measurement, etc…
Starting from an overview of the star acquisition process, this paper will discuss the methods and present the results obtained during
the first four months of the commissioning phase
PLEIADES-HR IMAGE QUALITY COMMISSIONING
PLEIADES is the highest resolution civilian earth observing system ever developed in Europe. This imagery program is conducted
by the French National Space Agency, CNES. It operates since 2012 a first satellite PLEIADES-HR launched on 2011 December
17th, a second one should be launched by the end of the year. Each satellite is designed to provide optical 70 cm resolution coloured
images to civilian and defence users. The Image Quality requirements were defined from users studies from the different spatial
imaging applications, taking into account the trade-off between on-board technological complexity and ground processing capacity.
The assessment of the image quality and the calibration operation have been performed by CNES Image Quality team during the 6
month commissioning phase that followed the satellite launch. These activities cover many topics gathered in two families :
radiometric and geometric image quality. The new capabilities offered by PLEIADES-HR agility allowed to imagine new methods of
image calibration and performance assessment.
Starting from an overview of the satellite characteristics, this paper presents all the calibration operations that were conducted during
the commissioning phase and also gives the main results for every image quality performance