ESA's MICROSATELLITE

"ESA’s microsatellite playing major role in scientific studies

ESA's smallest Earth Observation satellite, Proba, is making big contributions to science with applications ranging from environmental monitoring, agriculture, forest , land use, crop forecasting, marine and coastal science as well as biological soil crusts and solid waste landfill monitoring.

Launched on 22 October 2001, Proba orbits 600 kilometres above the Earth and acquires around 450 scientific image datasets of more than 100 separate sites each year. Its main payload, the Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS), is a highly configurable hyperspectral imager that sees down to a resolution of 17 metres and can acquire up to five images of a desired target at a time, each at a different angle with respect to Earth's surface, because Proba is ... (continue article)"