Dragonfly Aerospace, a South African-based leading provider of Earth-observation optical payloads and satellite platforms, has launched the EOS SAT-1 as part of the Transporter-6 mission
The satellite is the first of a seven-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit for customer EOSDA (EOS Data Analytics) with the remaining six to be deployed over the next three years.
EOS SAT is the world’s first agriculture-focused satellite constellation providing the agriculture and forestry industry with high-quality data to support efficient and sustainable practices.
Images obtained from Dragonfly’s EOS SAT-1 will deliver information for harvest monitoring, application mapping, seasonal planning and assessments that analyse information such as soil moisture, yield prediction and biomass levels. This data will support growers with reducing carbon dioxide emissions and help them to develop sustainable agricultural methods.
Equipped with two DragonEye electro-optical imagers, EOS SAT-1 will provide 44 km swath panchromatic and multispectral imagery across 11 spectral bands at close to 1 m resolution.
Bryan Dean, CEO and co-founder of Dragonfly Aerospace, said, “This is a key moment for Dragonfly Aerospace, and we are thrilled to be delivering EOS SAT-1 with a number of firsts – the first imaging satellite designed and built by Dragonfly, the first microsatellite to be manufactured in South Africa since 2009, the first satellite of the EOS SAT constellation and the first agri-focused constellation in space.
“This has been an important project for our whole team and has allowed us to demonstrate our capabilities, not just in producing high-performance electro-optical imagers, but in designing and manufacturing a full imaging satellite system.”
The EOS SAT-1 satellite separated from the launch vehicle as planned and began transmitting a signal to the mission control centre on Earth.
