Satnews Daily
February 23rd, 2014

Arianespace—Signing On For Two More... (Launch Contracts)


[SatNews] Arianespace and Italian company CGS S.p.A. announced the launch contract for the OPTSAT 3000 satellite today in Rome—Arianespace also announced that it had signed a launch contract with the Israeli Space Agency for the VENµS satellite.

The two satellites will be orbited together by a Vega launcher in early 2016 from the Guiana Space Center, Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. The OPTSAT 3000 Earth observation satellite will be built by IAI (Israel Aircraft Industry) for the Italian Ministry of Defense, on behalf of the prime contractor team, CGS S.p.A. and Telespazio (Finmeccanica/Thales). Weighing about 400 kg at launch, it will be placed into a Sun-synchronous
orbit.

VENµS (Vegetation and Environment Monitoring on a New Micro Satellite) is an Earth observation mission developed jointly by the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) and the French space agency CNES, within the scope of Europe's Copernicus Earth monitoring program.

The VENµS satellite will be built by IAI. Weighing about 300 kg at launch it will be sent into Sun-synchronous orbit.

 

Follow Arianespace's launch activity at http://www.arianespace.com/.