Satellite Mission

PROBA-V was developed as both a follow-up to the 15-year SPOT-VEGETATION mission, as well as a preparation for the recently launched ESA Sentinel-3 land and ocean observation satellite mission. The SPOT-VEGETATION mission provided essential information on e.g. crop yields, droughts, and deforestation to a broad user community.

To optimally serve the vegetation and land surface community, PROBA-V’s spectral channels are similar to those of the SPOT-VGT instrument, thereby preserving a maximum of observational consistency with the SPOT-VGT era. Benefiting from the technological developments since the SPOT-VEGETATION launch in 1998, PROBA-V has a lean instrumental payload on a platform smaller than a cubic meter. Using a constellation of 3 cameras, PROBA-V covers the entire Earth every two days and provides useful reflectance measurements for climate impact assessment, surface water resource management, agricultural monitoring, and food security purposes.

PROBA-V has been developed by a full Belgian consortium, see the partners section for more details.