Platforms and orbits.

Technologies

• Geostationary imagers and sounders Continuous hemispheric views every few minutes for weather, fire, smoke and flood watch over a site.
• Low Earth orbit sun-synchronous missions Repeat-orbit optical, radar and thermal coverage at fixed local times, the backbone of land and ocean monitoring.
• Small satellite constellations Many small spacecraft that raise revisit to daily or sub-daily, traded against calibration stability and swath.
• High-altitude platform stations (HAPS) Stratospheric aircraft and balloons that loiter over an area for persistent imaging, sensing or relay.
• Crewed survey aircraft Large-format cameras, lidar and hyperspectral instruments flown on survey grids for regional mapping and baselines.
• Drones and remotely piloted aircraft Centimetre-scale capture on demand for site survey, inspection, change and post-event assessment.
• Tethered aerostats and balloon soundings Lofted cameras, radiosondes and relays for persistent local views and vertical atmospheric profiles.
• Ground-based remote sensing Tower, mast and rooftop instruments such as sky cameras, phenocams, ground radar and spectroradiometers that sense remotely from the surface.