The Pleiades Users Thematic Commissionings: First main results

This Pléiades system is made of two ”small satellites” (mass of one ton) offering a spatial resolution at nadir of 0.7 meters and a field of view of 20 kilometers. ORFEO, the Pleiades Accompaniment Program, was set up by CNES, the French Space Agency, to prepare, accompany and promote the use and the exploitation of the images acquired by this very high resolution optical sensor, especially in public sector. It was initiated in 2004 and will last until April 2014. The objectives of this program are 1) to assess the thematic capability of the Pleiades system to produce the various services required by end-users for distinct domains (defence, risks, cartography, hydrology, forestry, agriculture . . . ) and 2) to develop efficient tools to facilitate image information extraction by end-users. This paper presents the first results of the last phase of the ORFEO program: the Pléiades Users Thematic Commissioning.