LAND MONITORING ASPECTS BY SENTINEL-2 AND VENμS

A joint JCT-IAI working group was established recently to demonstrate monitoring with the Venμs satellite of the ecological state of a typical mediterranean ecosystem using NPP as example. This presentation will give an overview of the status of this work and preliminary results. A comparison with equivalent S2 results will be discussed and insights for recommendations on similar future missions in terms of spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions in order to complement existing missions.

The ESA satellites Sentinel-2 (S2) and the joint French-Israeli microsatellite Venμs μare two of the most recent satellites put into orbit for land monitoring. Each satellite falls into a different mass category. With a launch mass of 1140 kg, S2 is a standard size satellite while Venμs with a launch mass of 265 kg, that is four times less, falls into the category of mini-satellites. While the observation of vegetation is the main objective of VENμS, S2 has broader mission applications but the observation of land biomass is one of its primary objectives. Those two missions have some commonalities, in particular in terms of spectral bands, and also some differences, for instance in terms of revisit and considering that the S2 are a series of satellite. In order to optimize the design of future sensors for land monitoring we analyze the advantages and limitations of each of these systems based on in-orbit imaging results and try to quantify the added value of larger satellites versus mini-satellites for such missions.