What is ORFEO?
ORFEO stands for Optical and Radar Federated Earth Observation. In 2001 a cooperation program was set between France and Italy to develop ORFEO, an Earth observation dual system with metric resolution: Italy is in charge of COSMO-Skymed the radar component development, and France of PLEIADES the optic component. The PLEIADES optic component is composed of two “small satellites” (mass of one ton) offering a spatial resolution at nadir of 0.7 m and a field of view of 20 km. Their great agility enables a daily access all over the world, essentially for defense and civil security applications, and a coverage capacity necessary for the cartography kind of applications at scales better than those accessible to SPOT family satellites. Moreover, PLEIADES will have stereoscopic acquisition capacity to meet the fine cartography needs, notably in urban regions, and to bring more information when used with aerial photography. The ORFEO “targeted” acquisition capacities made it a system particularl
