Toulouse/Daejeon, 20/12/2017 – After four months at the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) test facilities in Daejeon, South Korea, during which intensive testing was performed by a joint team of KARI and Airbus Defence and Space, the GOCI-II ocean colour imaging instrument has been delivered to the customer.

GOCI-II will be mounted on the GK2B satellite and will be launched in 2019 from Kourou on an Ariane 5. From its geostationary orbit, GOCI-II will analyse the colour of the ocean around the Korean peninsula, in order to detect, monitor, quantify and predict short-term variations in the characteristics of the coastal regions, for scientific and industrial purposes.

GOCI-II offers greater functional, geometrical and radiometric performance than its predecessor, launched in 2010 on the COMS satellite. It will acquire images of the Earth in 12 spectral bands between 380 nm and 865 nm, with resolution of about 250 m at Nadir. It will also be able to provide images of the Earth’s entire disk as well as the Moon and stars for calibration.