Ibadan, 29 April 2024. – Airbus has launched the Pléiades Neo Next program to expand its very high-resolution Earth observation constellation. This new program will result in new satellite assets and capabilities, including enhanced native resolution. As a first step of Pléiades Neo Next, Airbus is also developing a new satellite which will launch in the next few years.
Working together, the Pléiades Neo and Pléiades Neo Next satellites aim to offer a higher revisit anywhere on Earth, up to several times per day. In addition to enhanced native resolution, Pléiades Neo Next development will further improve the ground segment, the DRS and the OneAtlas platform, resulting in a higher capacity of imagery requests as well as optimizing the time between request, capture and reception.
Users will continue to be able to directly task the Airbus satellites up to a few dozen minutes prior to the satellite over the area of interest. Furthermore, users will be able to receive images through their Direct Receiving Stations (DRS) on the ground or on the OneAtlas digital platform swiftly after collection, allowing mission-critical applications.
Speaking on the program, Karen Florschütz, Executive Vice President of Connected Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space, said, “The Pléiades Neo Next program builds on the success of our existing Pléiades Neo constellation, which serves government and commercial customers around the world. This new program will further enhance our standard of excellence in terms of quality, performance, and reliability to deliver images as well as geo-intelligence services and applications.”
With Pléiades Neo Next, Airbus is reinforcing its Earth observation capabilities and services to remain at the forefront of geospatial technologies. The Airbus fleet includes both optical and radar satellite constellations ensuring complementarity services and applications, including various resolutions, all-weather and day and night capabilities.
