In 1994 the SPOT 5 programme was approved by the French government, consisting initially of two identical spacecraft in orbit and two new optical imagers for these spacecraft, called HRG (High Resolution Geometric) and HRS (High Resolution Stereoscopic) to provide a ground resolution of 5 m.

In 1996, the programme was downsized (to one orbiting spacecraft and redefined to improve the spatial resolution of the imagery below 5 m. As a result, an innovative image acquisition and processing scheme was developed by CNES to obtain spatial resolutions of about 3 m from two 5 m images.

In January 1999, a further functional improvement was introduced giving the HRS (High Resolution Stereoscopic) instrument a full stereoscopic capability. It was also decided to continue to fly the Vegetation instrument. SPOT 5 continued the partnerships with France (CNES), Belgium (OSTC) and Sweden (SNSB) as established at the beginning of the SPOT programme.

The SPOT 5 satellite configuration took advantage of the SPOT 4 bus design, using the extended platform design (SPOT MK2, provided by MMS) and the service module accommodated twice the payload of the SPOT 3 bus. The ACS (Attitude Control Subsystem) provided a pointing accuracy of 0.05^° and an attitude restitution of 6 x 10^-5 radians. This excellent location accuracy  corresponds to < 50 m without ground control points (instead of 350 m on SPOT 1 to 4). 

SPOT 1 through to SPOT 5 had identical Sun-synchronous circular orbits with an altitude of 832 km. The repeat cycle was 26 days with just over 14 orbits per day.

Learn more about SPOT 5 from these related websites:

• SPOT 5 on CNES Website*
• SPOT 5 on the eoPortal*

*The information provided is sourced and updated by external entities. For further details, please consult our Terms and Conditions page.