Dnepr Rocket Launches Satellite Quintet into Orbit

PARIS - The five-satellite RapidEye commercial Earth observation constellation launched successfully on Friday aboard a silo-based Dnepr rocket from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. All five satellites have sent signals and are healthy in low Earth orbit, the satellite's owners and the prime contractor said.

Brandenburg, Germany-based RapidEye AG, formed 10 years ago to build what was to have been an entirely privately funded Earth observation system, expects to begin operations of the five identical satellites following three months of in-orbit testing and final satellite positioning.

"The launch and the satellites' condition in orbit all have gone perfectly," RapidEye Chief Executive Wolfgang Beidermann said in an interview. "We expect to be operational in about 13 weeks. The year 2008 therefore will be negligible in terms of revenues, but our targets for 2009 are at least 20 million euros ($29.5 million). Anything north of that we will consider a successful year."

The satellites were built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) of Guildford, England, with the five-band multispectral optical imager provided by Jena-Optronik of Jena, Germany. The satellites will take pictures with a ground resolution of (21.3 feet) 6.5 meters, and a picture width of about 48 miles (78 km).

The five 330-pound (150-kg) satellites together will image some 4 million square kilometers per day from their orbit at 403 miles (650 km) in altitude. The satellites will be stationed 19 minutes apart in their orbit, which is near-polar but will image areas between 75 degrees north and 75 degrees south latitude.

ISC Kosmotras, a Russian-Ukrainian company that markets the Dnepr rocket, a converted ballistic missile, is RapidEye's launch-services provider.

Insurance, forestry and agricultural markets are expected to be the primary users of the RapidEye system, Beidermann said.

SSTL Business Manager Phil Davies said Friday that two of the five satellites delivered health-monitoring telemetry data on their first orbit overflying RapidEye's Brandenburg facility. The other three satellites followed suit on the next orbit, confirming their health through data at both Brandenburg and at SSTL's Guildford site, Davies said.

"It's fair to say we're over-the-Moon happy about this," Davies said. "It has been a long wait."

RapidEye was formed in 1998 and initially hoped to complete its project financing in time to be in operation in 2002. But completing the financial package proved more difficult than planned and ultimately required the involvement of the German Aerospace Center, DLR, which adopted RapidEye as part of Germany's national space program. DLR said in a Friday statement that the agency has invested 15 million euros in RapidEye. DLR's role in the project, as a co-funding partner, is similar to the agency's role in the TerraSAR-X radar Earth observation satellite now in orbit.

"After TerraSAR-X, RapidEye is the second major space project in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) area," DLR board member Ludwig Baumgarten said in a Friday statement, adding that  DLR has other Earth observation satellite projects on the horizon.

Canada's MaDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) is RapidEye's system prime contractor, with the Canadian Commercial Corp. acting as a contracting agency and SSTL providing guarantees to RapidEye's bank consortium.

RapidEye has raised some 160 million euros, which Biedermann said is sufficient to pay for the construction and launch of the satellites, related ground infrastructure and operating costs through 2009, when the company expects to reach the cash flow break-even point.

Slightly more than 50 percent of the financing has come from a consortium of two German banks Commerzbank and KfW, the lead arrangers, and Export Development Canada, a Canadian bank.

Twenty-five percent of the financing came from strategic partners including MDA and other RapidEye contractors and DLR. The remaining 24 percent came in the form of government subsidies from the State of Brandenburg and from the European Union's regional development and innovation fund, Efre.

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