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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