The Belgian satellite PROBA-V, developed by European Space Agency has completed 7 years in orbit providing daily data on the state of vegetation at the global scale.
The Belgian satellite PROBA-V, developed by ESA on the initiative of Belgium has completed 7 years in orbit and has helped the scientific community with the provision of daily data on the state of vegetation at the global scale. The operating life of PROBA-V, was initially fixed at 2.5 years but has practically been tripled.
During the past 7 years, the satellite has enabled more than 4,000 users, from 120 countries around the planet and representing around 1,300 different organizations or companies, to download some 600,000 products corresponding to 1 petabyte (1015 bytes or 1 million gigabytes) of data. These data have been and will continue to be exploited for many applications in the future, such as climate change impact assessments, water resource management, deforestation, agricultural control or food security.
The supply of daily and decadal products by PROBA-V will indeed be ensured in almost real time until June 30. After this date, due to orbital drift, the mission will go into experimental mode and will provide, on a less regular basis, data mainly focusing on Europe and Africa.
– from Editor’s Desk
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