A contract signed today secures ESA co-funding towards the development of Aerospacelab’s Multispectral Companion Mission – a first ‘in-orbit demonstration’ satellite prototype of a future constellation that aims to generate commercial multispectral data products to support Copernicus Sentinel-2 datasets with daily global coverage.

ESA’s Investing in Industrial Innovation InCubed programme focuses on developing innovative and commercially viable products and services that exploit the value of Earth observation. However, the programme is very wide in scope and is used to co-fund anything from building satellites to ground applications and everything between. With co-funding from the Belgium InCubed subscription and Aerospacelab’s own co-funding, the way is paved to develop this exciting new satellite prototype. ESA is also involved in developing the satellite instruments.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is used for a myriad of applications including environmental protection and food security. The aim here is that the Multispectral Companion Mission will work with Sentinel-2 to increase revisit frequency and enhance data products for agricultural and environmental applications in the commercial domain.

Read full story: InCubed co-funds Belgian Aerospacelab to develop Multispectral Companion Mission