Russia’s TsSKB Progress organization of Samara is building what program officials say is the country’s first civilian imaging spacecraft capable of transmitting high-resolution digital pictures to ground stations as it passes overhead.
Images collected by the Resurs-DK1 spacecraft will be used by civilian government agencies for purposes such as mapping, and resource and disaster management. In addition, plans call for selling Resurs-DK1 imagery — which will have resolutions sharp enough to distinguish ground objects as small as 1 meter across — on a commercial basis.
Russia has been launching military remote sensing satellites with digital transmission capabilities for years, but Resurs-DK1 is the first such satellite officially dedicated to civil use. Previous civilian imaging craft literally dropped their film back to Earth in canisters. Typically these satellites lasted only about a month or two in orbit.
The Resurs-DK series craft, by contrast, are designed to last at least three years in orbit, according to Alexander Chechin, first deputy general designer of the TsSKB design bureau of Samara, Russia.
“It is a very promising project both financially and technologically,” Chechin said.
The Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos) is financing the Resurs-DK1’s construction, according to Leonid Makredenko, head of the agency’s remote sensing branch. Senior Rosaviakosmos officials assigned priority status to the project during a Jan. 24 meeting in Moscow, he said.
