The ScanSAR mode offers a resolution of four by 20 meters over an area of 100 by 3,000 kilometers, or six by 40 meters over an area of 200 by 2,500 kilometers. This allows it to cover larger areas of land or water.
The Stripmap mode offers resolutions of up to three meters, imaging strips measuring 15 kilometers in width and 2,500 km in length. The system offers three operational modes, with the highest-resolution Spotlight mode split into Spotlight-1 for military users, with up to 0.8 meters resolution, and Spotlight-2, a lower-resolution mode for civilian usage. Although similar in appearance and dimensions, the second-generation satellites feature more advanced systems and capabilities and greater operational lifetime than the first generation satellites, taking advantage of technological advances since the first COSMO-SkyMed launch fifteen years ago.ĬSG satellites feature radar systems that offer higher resolutions and greater image polarization capabilities than the first generation spacecraft. The CSG satellites were built by Thales Alenia Space, using the company’s Prima satellite bus which was also used on the first generation satellites. They have also assisted in the response to the 2008 Cyclone Nargis landfall in Myanmar, landslides after Typhoon Talas in Japan in 2011, the Nepal earthquake of 2015, the central Italy earthquakes of 2016, and many more events. The COSMO-SkyMed satellites have provided much useful data after natural disasters, including this month’s eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano in the South Pacific. Italy’s Ministry of Defense is one of the program’s key stakeholders, with the constellation’s highest-resolution images restricted to military users. Like the prior generation of COSMO-SkyMed satellites, CSG-1 and CSG-2 can provide imagery that is useful in monitoring natural disasters and observing their results, as well as other civil and military purposes including agriculture, maritime surveillance, reconnaissance, cartography, and risk management.ĬOSMO-SkyMed is under the overall control of the Italian Space Agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI). Render of a CSG satellite in orbit - via Telespazio The new satellites are designed to operate for at least seven years, improving on the first generation’s five-year design life, and can observe the globe in any weather or lighting conditions due to their use of X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) as opposed to optical systems which are negatively impacted by cloud cover. The CSG-1 and CSG-2 satellites together will provide the same capability as the four spacecraft that made up the first-generation system. Like their predecessors, the Second Generation satellites will be able to observe the same points on Earth twice a day, at 06:00 and 18:00 hours local time. The new satellites are designed to operate along with the first generation satellites for operational continuity. CSG-1 and 2 will operate in the same orbital plane as the four previous-generation COSMO-SkyMed (Constellation of Small Satellites for the Mediterranean Basin Observation) satellites which were launched between 20.
The CSG-2, or COSMO-SkyMed Seconda Generazione 2, mission follows the first second-generation satellite, CSG-1, which was launched in December 2019 aboard a Soyuz rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. The mission had suffered weather-related scrubs and even a cruise ship in the range, prior to lifting off on Monday. The Italian Space Agency’s CSG-2 mission, the second satellite in its COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation constellation, finally launched liftoff Monday at 6:11 PM EST (23:11 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40).
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