South Korea's Satrec Initiative Plans to Build 4 10-Centimeter-Class Optical Satellites

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 17, South Korean satellite manufacturer Satrec Initiative disclosed that it plans to develop and launch four 10-centimeter-class resolution optical satellites for Hanwha Group's Earth observation constellation, to supplement the 64-satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation previously announced by Hanwha Systems. Eugene Kim, Executive Vice President of Satrec Initiative, said during World Space Business Week in Paris that the four optical satellites will operate in coordination with Hanwha Systems' SAR satellites, targeting the defense, intelligence, and high-resolution Earth observation markets.

The master plan announced by Hanwha Group in July shows that it intends to build an ultra-low Earth orbit Earth observation constellation, with the goal of achieving a revisit capability of approximately once every 30 minutes through SAR satellites by 2031. Hanwha Systems is responsible for the SAR satellites, Satrec Initiative for the optical satellites, and Hanwha Aerospace for building launch capabilities. Satellite imagery will also be integrated into the artificial intelligence analysis system of SI Analytics, a subsidiary of Satrec Initiative.

The four optical satellites planned by Satrec Initiative this time target a spatial resolution of 10-centimeter class and need to operate in ultra-low Earth orbit below 400 kilometers. Hanwha previously disclosed that ultra-low orbit operations will face issues such as atmospheric drag and atomic oxygen erosion, so it plans to first deploy experimental satellites in an orbit of about 500 kilometers and then gradually lower the orbital altitude to obtain operational data for the subsequent constellation.

Satrec Initiative currently already has the SpaceEye-T commercial optical satellite platform. According to the company's official website, SpaceEye-T can acquire 0.25-meter panchromatic and 1-meter multispectral imagery, with a swath width of 12 kilometers and a downlink rate of 2 Gbps; its electro-optical payload EOS-T also achieves 0.25-meter-class resolution. The new 10-centimeter-class satellites will further improve spatial resolution on the basis of the existing 25-centimeter-class commercial optical capability.

Satrec Initiative's original plans also included forming a commercial high-resolution constellation composed of four SpaceEye-T satellites by 2028 to increase revisit frequency over the same area. The 10-centimeter-class optical satellites disclosed this time are intended for Hanwha's ultra-low-orbit integrated Earth observation system, forming a combination of optical and radar payloads with the 64 SAR satellites.