UK satellite manufacturer Open Cosmos will build a €60M ($65.1M) EO constellation for Greece to help the Mediterranean nation tackle ocean pollution and challenges in agriculture.
The constellation of optical satellites will be Greece’s first larger-scale satellite project dedicated to environmental monitoring.
More details: The constellation will include seven small satellites in LEO, each fitted with multispectral and hyperspectral cameras for high-resolution Earth imaging. The constellation will help Greece to monitor the spread of marine pollution and provide farmers precision data to make agriculture more efficient.
Picking up the tab: The Greek government will pay for the constellation, which will be built by Open Cosmos’ new Greece-based branch, Open Cosmos Aegean. The project, which is also supported by ESA, will complement the Atlantic Constellation— an EO project from Portugal, Spain, and the UK announced in November.
“Greece is making significant steps in space,” Dimitris Papastergiou, Greece’s minister of digital governance, said in a statement. “By investing in both capacity-buying and capacity-building space programs, our aim is to stimulate local high-tech space industries, foster job creation, retain our skilled engineers and space experts in the country, and attract additional talent.”
Need for speed: The satellites will use on-board AI to speed up data processing and become part of Open Cosmos’ envisioned OpenConstellation—a large fleet of small, EO satellites shared by different users. Open Cosmos wants the OpenConstellation to become the “largest shared infrastructure in space.”
Greece has committed to provide access to data from its new constellation to improve disaster response and environmental monitoring worldwide.
