Leonardo is pleased to announce that the Italian Ministry of Defence’s  OPTSAT-3000 satellite is ready to be launched. The launch is scheduled for Wednesday 2 August at 1.58 UTC from the Kourou European spaceport in French Guyana.

OPTSAT-3000 consists of a satellite in a sun-synchronous LEO (Low Earth Orbit) orbit and of a Ground Segment for in-orbit control and for data acquisition and processing. OPTSAT-3000will provide high-resolution images of any part of the globe, providing Italy with an autonomous national capability of Earth observation from space with a high-resolution optical sensor.

The whole system is supplied by Leonardo through its joint venture Telespazio (Leonardo 67%, Thales 33%). As prime contractor, Telespazio leads an international group of companies including, among others, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which built the satellite within an international co-operation agreement between Italy and Israel as well as OHB Italia that will be responsible for the launch, which will make use of the VEGA European launcher, produced by AVIO.

The ground segment is located over three operation centres: the Joint Satellite Remote Survey Centre (CITS – Centro Interforze di Telerilevamento Satellitare) in Pratica di Mare, the SICRAL Joint Management and Control Centre (CIGC – Centro Interforze di Gestione e Controllo) in Vigna di Valle and the Fucino Space Centre of Telespazio.

OPTSAT-3000 will jointly operate with the second-generation COSMO-SkyMed system of radar satellites – which has also been developed by Italian industry, with Leonardo and its joint ventures, Thales Alenia Space (Thales 67%, Leonardo 33%) and Telespazio – integrating optical and radar data to provide the Italian Ministry of Defence with information characterised by extreme accuracy, resolution and completeness and with state-of-the-art analysis and operational tools.

Leonardo release