Pléiades

Pléiades is a constellation of very high resolution optical Earth imaging satellites that serves both civil and military users. The first two satellites, Pléiades-1A and Pléiades-1B, were launched on Soyuz rockets from Kourou in French Guiana in December 2011 and December 2012 and share a phased, Sun-synchronous orbit about 695 kilometres up, offset by 180 degrees to give daily revisit of any point on the globe. The programme began in October 2003 with the French space agency CNES as overall system prime contractor and EADS Astrium, now part of Airbus Defence and Space, as prime contractor for the space segment. The satellites can image a strip 800 kilometres wide at 70 centimetre resolution and are agile enough to take along-track stereo and tri-stereo images. Later Pléiades Neo satellites extend the family.