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

One Fine Day In Provence

[ackthpt]

Sez a French Farmer: "Mon dieu! I feel like I am being watched by a goddess on a mountain top!"

Sez a Fisherman: "Mais oui! It is like I can feel her crystal eyes burning into the back of my head!"

oo-er

[telchine]

plasma-thruster engine

Am I the only person that giggled when reading that

Re:oo-er

[whitehatlurker]

Possibly ;-) However, I almost spit coffee when I saw the caption "VENUS in the sky with ions" in the article.

Overfishing?

[cgifool]

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

Re:Overfishing?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

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

Simple. No more fish means no more fishermen. Problem Solved.

(Actually I had the exact same thought as you when I read that part of it)

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...

It's only for helping the farmers right?

[Noryungi]

Let's see, this thing has:

1. Advanced, high-res optical cameras.
2. Plasma thruster to change orbits.
3. Small size, for smaller radar image, and/or better survivability.

And all of this for crop surveillance? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I think our good friends at the NRO are going to get some competition from... ahem... "friends and allies" or something like this. Even if I am just being paranoid, the military potential is there, and don't forget that SPOT (European space imaging project, led by France) has been denounced often by the USA as a "dual-use" project...

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.

wokka

[kisrael]

If other nations get jealous of the camera and jets of this sattelite, will they have a bad case of Venus-envy?

Are there any large quantities of fish left?

[under_score]

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

NASA woes and Data policy

[Lord Satri]

This is good news especially when in light to the alarmist view of future NASA satellite projects.

For the SPOT program, the French are trying harder than the US to recover their fees. What I mean is SPOT data is not cheap when compared to NASA data (Landsat, ALI, Hyperion, etc). Yes, I know, this is different types of data, but the US has been in the past more prone to sell data at a lower price than the French. My uneducated guess is that Israel too will want to sell the data in order to cover their costs. This is just different goals: make the data available cheap and hope the advantages of massive use of data will justify the investment. That's the problem with Canada's Radarsat-1 and Radarsat-2 (not yet launched, but commercial). While Canada's Radarsat-C (launch timeframe: 2012-2014) data will be available at a minimal fee for the canadian government agencies. That said, I just hope this VENUS satellite will have a data policy which will allow widespread use of the data it collects.

Obligatory austin powers reference

[morganix]

Dr. Evil: Our early attempts at a tractor beam went through several preparations. Preparations A through G were a complete failure. But now, ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a working tractor beam, which we shall call... Preparation H.

[Scott snickers]

Dr. Evil:

What?

Scott Evil: Why don't you just call it operation ass-cream, you ass.

Dr. Evil: I'm sorry, did you say you want some ice cream?

Scott Evil: Yes, I'd love some chocolate ass-cream.

Dr. Evil: Perhaps later.

Number 2: Dr. Evil, I love your plan.

Dr. Evil: You do?

Frau Farbissina: YAH. IT'S A REALLY GOOD PLAN!

Dr. Evil: Yes Frau, on the whole Preparation H feels good.

[Scott resumes snickering]

Dr. Evil: What is it now?

Scott Evil: No, I totally agree with you. Preparation H does feel good... on the hole.

Poor Naming

[dreemernj]

Of all the things they could have named a dot in the sky after, they had to go and name it after an existing dot in the sky.

Then/Than!

[Resident Netizen]

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/than.html

Jeez, kids, this ain't no third grade book report! /grammar nazi mode = off

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.

Fish Location may lead to Fish Extinction

[digitaldc]

'The Israeli-French project will allow farmers to better treat their crops, fisherman to locate large quantities of fish in mid-sea...'

There is already a threat of illegal fishing on the high seas, I only see this as being detrimental to the ocean environment.
This article states, 'Over half of the global fish stocks are already fully exploited, and 25 percent are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion.'
A better use would be to locate and protect certain species from depletion.

But the real question is, does anyone care? Or will they only care when it is too late to do anything about it?

Re:This is just funny, it had me laughing.

[fighthairloss]

Ok I'll bite.

Yes, it's funny to think "oh suuure... it's for farmers and fishermen".

It's a whole different thing to let go of the humor and objectively state "we all know what it's really for".

I don't know what it's for. I don't know satellites and satellite designs, so I would ask questions such as:

- what kind of equipment do different types of spy satellites carry?
- what kind of orbits do they use to maximize the results of their missions?
- how heavy are they due to the kinds of equipment they have to carry?
- do these satellites in question fit the profile of anything we've described above?

Ok, if you have evidence or some observations about the nature of satellites and how you think this might be more than it's being touted as, let's see it so we can all make a better decision.

Otherwise, no, we don't "all know what this satellite will be used for..."