South Korea's domestically developed next-generation medium satellites are drawing attention as key infrastructure for monitoring the country's land, farmland and forests. The satellites capture images detailed enough to distinguish the types of vehicles parked on the ground, and can scan the entire Korean Peninsula to assess crop growth and wildfire damage.
The Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) held a press briefing on the 1st with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Rural Development Administration and the Korea Forest Service, releasing early operations results and observation images from Next-Generation Medium Satellite No. 2 and No. 4.
Both satellites are in early operations, during which engineers check the condition of the satellite bus and payloads and place the spacecraft in their target orbits. Satellite No. 2 captures the land in detail at resolutions of 0.5 meters in black-and-white and 2 meters in color. Together with the existing No. 1 satellite, No. 2 will be used for land management, monitoring of urban change and disaster response. At the briefing, high-resolution images were released of major sites at home and abroad, including Dokdo and the Seoul Sports Complex as well as Niagara Falls in the United States and Starlake City in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Next-Generation Medium Satellite No. 4 is designed for rapid, repeated observation of wide areas rather than fine detail. With an observation swath of 120 kilometers, it can photograph the entire Korean Peninsula in three days. It is tailored to agriculture and forestry, fields that require periodic observation of large expanses of farmland and forest. The Rural Development Administration has used satellite imagery to estimate crop planting and harvest areas and to analyze crop vigor and vegetation conditions. The Korea Forest Service has also used observation data from the agriculture and forestry satellite to analyze areas damaged by large wildfires and forest vegetation, and to produce maps of sites targeted for control of pine wilt disease.
The two satellites are scheduled to complete early operations within this year, after which they will be transferred to KASA's National Satellite Operation Center to begin full-scale missions. The government plans to combine satellite observation data with other public data and expand its use to land and resource management, disaster response, observation of farmland and crops and supply management, and forest management.
"The images actually captured by Next-Generation Medium Satellite No. 2 and No. 4 are an important achievement that shows what value our satellite technology can provide to the public," KASA Administrator Oh Tae-seok said. "We will strengthen the system for using this data so that high-quality observation information is applied to a range of national tasks including land, agriculture, forestry and disaster response, and leads to services that the public can feel."
