Vietnam’s first remote sensing satellite, VNREDSat-1, will be launched into orbit on May 4 from the Kourou launch pad, Guyana, France.    Image of VNREDSat-1

On April 25, Deputy Director of the Space Technology under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and Deputy Head of the VNREDSat-1 project Bui Trong Tuyen released the information provided by Arianespace company (France), the contractor of the VNREDSat-1 project.

According to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, the VNREDSat-1 Project has a total investment of EUR55.8 million in preferential ODA of the French government and VND64,820 million in corresponding capital from Vietnam. The VNREDSat-1 was designed and consulted by Astrium SAS Company under the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), experts in producing satellites of France. Once completed, Vietnam will be able to provide high resolution satellite images to ministries, agencies, provinces and cities that have demand to use remote sensing satellite images, bringing practical effectiveness for socio-economic development, coping with natural disasters and climate change.

VNREDSat-1 project is a coordination, making the best use of the available infrastructure of the system to receive, store and process images of remote sensing satellites of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, creating a complete and independent supervising system from the satellite to ground-receiving station and the centre for processing and distributing remote sensing image data in Vietnam.

It is an optical earth-observation satellite capable of capturing images on all areas on the earth’s surface. Its mission is to take photos in PAN and four MS bands, with a revisit time of three days. The spatial resolution is 2.5 metres (PAN) and 10 metres (MS). Its platform is 600mm x 570mm x 500mm. It has total mass of about 120 kilograms. The designed life-time is five years./.

CPV