SPOT (Satellite Probatoire d'Observation de la Terre) is the
French government sponsored civil Earth observation program,
with support from Belgium and Sweden. A single SPOT satellite
provides
... complete coverage of the Earth every 26 days. Image
products from SPOT are handled by a commercial entity,
SPOT-Image Corp.
Spacecraft:
3-Axis stabilized. Single 5-panel solar array, each panel is 2.6
x 1.9 m. Hydrazine propulsion system provides orbit maintenance.
Payload:
Two HRVIR (High Resolution Visible - Infrared) pushbrrom imaging
instruments are carried. HRVIR is derived from the HRV
instruments on SPOT 1-3. This system will provide 10 m
resolution in the panchromatic band and 20 m resolution in the
multispectral bands. HRVIR includes a new medium IR channel to
support vegetation analysis and harvest forecasting. The HRVIRs
are steerable to within 27 deg off-nadir. Each HRVIR has a swath
width of 60 km. The Vegetation Monitoring instrument has 1 km
resolution in the same bands as the HRVIR. PASTEL optical link
terminal supports laser crosslink experiments. DORIS (Doppler
Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite)
precision orbit determination system.
Additional information available at
http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/QuickLooks/spot4QL.html
[Summary provided by NASA]