SA microsatellite heads to the US to prepare for launch

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28 September 2022 News

EOS SAT-1, the first imaging satellite to be built by Dragonfly Aerospace, will soon leave the 3000 m² Dragonfly Aerospace design and manufacturing facility in Stellenbosch. It will then travel to SpaceX’s launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida for pre-launch testing ahead of the Transporter-6 mission scheduled to launch in December. The satellite will form the first of a seven-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit for customer EOSDA (EOS Data Analytics). The remaining six satellites of the constellation will be deployed over the next three years.

EOS SAT will be the world’s first agriculture-focused satellite constellation, providing the agriculture and forestry industry with high-quality data to support efficient and sustainable practices. Images obtained from Dragonfly’s EOS SAT-1 will deliver valuable information for harvest monitoring, application mapping, seasonal planning and assessments that analyse information such as soil moisture, yield prediction and biomass levels. This data will support growers in their efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and help them to develop sustainable agricultural methods without financial losses.

Equipped with two DragonEye electro-optical imagers, EOS SAT-1 will provide 44 km swath panchromatic and multispectral imagery across 11 spectral bands at close to 1 m resolution, making it one of the most powerful satellites in LEO.

Bryan Dean, CEO and Co-founder of Dragonfly Aerospace, said, “This is a key moment for Dragonfly Aerospace and we are thrilled to be delivering EOS SAT-1 with a number of firsts – the first imaging satellite designed and built by Dragonfly, the first to be manufactured in South Africa since 2009, the first satellite of the EOS SAT constellation and the first agri-focused constellation in space.”

“This has been an important project for our whole team and has allowed us to demonstrate our capabilities, not only in producing high-performance electro-optical imagers, but in designing and manufacturing a full imaging satellite system. It’s an amazing feeling to see EOS SAT-1 leave our premises and take the next step in its journey to delivering crucial data that will have important environmental benefits for our planet,” he concluded.

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SA microsatellite heads to the US to prepare for launch

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