[SatNews] The South Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, has released KOMPSAT-5 images acquired for the calibration purpose.

KOMPSAT-5 was launched on August 22, 2013, from the Yasny launch base of Russia. During the early operation and calibration phase, all of the satellites functions have been verified and the satellite is now under payload calibration. The released images are acquired for the verification of payload performance.

Artistic rendition of the KOMPSAT-5 satellite.
Image is courtesy of KARI and Satrec Initiative.

The KOMPSAT-5 CAL/VAL team will complete the calibration of the radar instrument and optimizing the data processing chain by the end of February 2014. After completion of calibration, KOMPSAT-5 will be operated to provide products for various applications such as security and defense, image interpretation, mapping, land and natural resource management, environmental monitoring, disaster monitoring and more. Commercial data from KOMPSAT-5 can be expected to be available from the second quarter of 2014.

According to the Korean Space Development Plan, KARI will launch KOMPSAT-3A equipped with VHR optical and medium resolution IR sensor in 2014 and KOMPSAT-6 equipped with VHR SAR in 2019, in addition to existing VHR optical and SAR systems such as KOMPSAT-2, KOMPSAT-3 and KOMPSAT-5. Such EO programs are planned and developed to meet the strong need of Earth observation data in public and commercial sectors.

KOMPSAT-5 is the first Korean radar satellite developed by KARI through the collaboration with Thales Alenia Space Italy, developer of the COSMO-SkyMed payload. The KARI is responsible for the operation and public use of the KOMPSAT-5 data, and Satrec Initiative is in charge of commercial marketing of KOMPSAT constellation, a unique combination of VHR optical data and SAR data, including KOMPSAT-2, KOMPSAT-3 and KOMPSAT-5.

The direct link for Satrec Initiative information is: http://www.satreci.com/eng/