VENUS Satellite, The Next Eye in the Sky

Erica Campbell writes "According to IsraCast, Israel and France are working together on a new micro-satellite called VENUS, which is supposed to be far more advanced then present satellites. VENUS, which will be launched in 2008, will carry a unique Super Spectral Space Camera, and will have an advanced plasma-thruster engine for propulsion. From the article: 'The Israeli-French project will allow farmers to better treat their crops, fisherman to locate large quantities of fish in mid-sea and will also vastly increase the ability of the scientific community to study and monitor the flora and fauna in many areas around the globe.'"

Comments

Overfishing?

[cgifool]

Umm. Exactly how does this help with the global problem of overfishing?

Re:Overfishing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a problem if you view it as a problem. Personally, I think it is an amazing technological feat that we have been able to wipe out macroscopic marine life. We've successfully invaded an entirely different habitat. I mean, imagine if fish had been able somehow to wipe out bison. I think you would have to recognize that as a pretty impressive accomplishment. Well, that's what we've done, and it is awesome if you think about it. So maybe the War on Drugs is stalled and the War on Terror is bogged down. But the War on Fish is going, ahem, swimmingly...
I celebrate by eating fresh, wild-caught fish as often as possible; you all should too if you don't want to look back in regret in 10 years from now when there's nothing left but farmed McSalmon...

Are there any large quantities of fish left?

[under_score]

This seems like a really expensive way to address over-fishing!

In that respect, I wish them bad luck

[Anonymous Coward]

There are nations with zero sense of responsibility for sustaining the fish stock. The fact that they are members of the EU, and the EU stands up for them, is a black mark on the EU. How about the ability to pinpoint Spanish fishing trawlers so Greenpeace can more effectively harass them.

Re:It's only for helping the farmers right?

[Vellmont]

I think our good friends at the NRO are going to get some competition from... ahem... "friends and allies"

You should stop being so paranoid. Where in the article does it say that it has a high resolving power? It's my understanding that you need large mirrors to get a good angular resolution. Large mirrors don't fit so well in a micro-satellite. This this is designed to have extremely good color vision, not the high angular resolution you want for a spy satellite. It'd be interesting to know the angular resolution of this thing, but my guess is that it's going to be fairly large.

Also, the Ion engine is designed to keep the thing in orbit, not change the orbit. Ion engines provide small amounts of thrust over long periods of time. Just the kind of thing you'd want to maintain an orbit, but it wouldn't be very good at changing the orbit quickly. Maybe if you had several months to wait for an orbit change. The spy satellite users usually don't have the luxury of waiting that long for changing orbits.

Re:It's only for helping the farmers right?

[Seanasy]

Advanced, high-res optical cameras.

The spatial resolution, as stated in the article, is 5.3m. Think about how big something would have to be in order for an image to show anything meaningful about it if each pixel represents 5 m^2.

Plasma thruster to change orbits.

Exactly why do you think this is spooky?

Small size, for smaller radar image, and/or better survivability.

Or, maybe, a small size means less weight and lower cost to orbit. But, don't let that hamper your paranoia.

Even if I am just being paranoid, the military potential is there...

Where? Look at this 5m SPOT image and tell me what the military applications are when you've got 2m commercially available imagery and probably much, much better on the satellite that wasn't announced in a press release.