2024-08-17 11:34 update: 2024-08-19, 15:35
Photo PAP/EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
Poland's largest and most advanced satellite, EagleEye, has been launched into low Earth orbit carried by Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Creotech Instruments company announced.
The launch took place at 8.56pm on Friday, Polish time, in California, and the satellite was disconnected from the launcher at approximately 10.14pm.
EagleEye was developed by an industrial-research consortium led by Creotech Instruments, Poland's largest manufacturer of satellites, systems and components, in collaboration with the Space Research Centre at the Polish Academy of Sciences (CBK PAN) and a Polish engineering company Scanway.
The satellite is intended to enable observations of the Earth with exceptional resolution.
"The images obtained from EagleEye are expected to have an extremely high resolution - reaching up to 1 metre per pixel. These images will be taken in both visible and infrared light," Tomasz Barcinski from CBK PAN, who participated in the project, told PAP.
He said that EagleEye was "a pioneering device", featuring the largest telescope ever used on a Polish satellite and providing high-resolution Earth images for various applications, from agriculture to military observation.
Creotech Instruments, which led the project, built the satellite platform called HyperSat and the integration of the satellite, the telescope which will observe Earth was developed by Scanway, and CBK PAN provided the telescope's computer and developed the control algorithms.
EagleEye is the largest observation satellite every built by Polish engineers. It weighs around 55 kilogrammes, which corresponds to the total mass of all Polish satellites built since the country started to participate in space exploration.
After unfolding the solar panels, EagleEye measures 55 cm x 150 cm x 90 cm.
The device also has an ion engine, which will allow it to lower its orbit from 510 km to 350 km, enabling even more detailed images. (PAP)
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