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About RapidEye
RapidEye was a constellation of five identical satellites owned and operated by Planet, launched on 29 August 2008. The constellation was deactivated on 31 March 2020 but Planet still offers data archive.
| Orbit Height | 630 km |
| Orbit Type | Sun-synchronous |
| Orbit Inclination | 97.9° |
| Local equator crossing time | 11:00 (± 1 hour) on the descending node |
| Orbit Period | 96.7 minutes |
| Global Revisit Time | 1 day (with body-pointing capability) 5.5 days at nadir over mid-latitude regions (±84° latitude) |
RapidEye is part of ESA's Third Party Missions Programme, in which ESA has an agreement with Planet to distribute archive data products from the mission.
RapidEye Objectives
The RapidEye objective was to provide a range of Earth Observation products and services to a global user community.
RapidEye Instruments
RapidEye Earth-imaging System (REIS)
The REIS sensors carried onboard the RapidEye satellites enabled a constellation of five identical sensors to operate in the same orbital plane and were calibrated equally with one another. An image from one RapidEye satellite was identical in characteristics to an image from any of the other four satellites, thus allowing access to an unprecedented amount of imagery collected on a frequent basis.
RapidEye's sensors produced imagery in five spectral bands (Red, Green, Blue, Red Edge and Near Infrared).
Over 70% of RapidEye's imagery had a view angle of less than 10°, as the view angle of RapidEye imagery was always less than 20°.
The instrument is also referred to as JSS-56 (Jena-Optronik Spaceborne Scanner-56) as well as MSI (Multispectral Imager) in the mission literature.
| Type | High-resolution optical imager | |
| Resolution (IFOV) | 6.5m GSD at nadir, resampled to 5 m pixel size on orthorectified products | |
| Swath Width (FOV) | ± 6.75º about nadir, corresponding to a swath of 77 km | |
| Bands | Blue | 440-510 nm |
| Green | 520-590 nm | |
| Red | 630-685 nm | |
| Red edge | 690-730 nm | |
| NIR (Near Infrared) | 760-850 nm | |
RapidEye Data
DATA COLLECTIONS
ESA is offering access to the full RapidEye archive for scientific research and application development. Access is only available to submitted proposals that are accepted.
As many as possible of the high-quality and innovative proposals submitted will be supported within the quota limit available.
ESA offers to registered user the access through the Online Dissemination server to the following data collections:
Planet Explorer
Search for RapidEye Level 3A products in the Planet Explorer. This online catalogue provides the option to search for and browse recent and past data over selected areas and times.