ELISA (ELectronic Intelligence by SAtellite) is a suite of four French

military satellites A military satellite is an artificial satellite used for a military purpose. The most common missions are intelligence gathering, navigation and military communications. The first military satellites were photographic reconnaissance missions. So ...

launched on 17 December 2011 from

Arianespace Arianespace SA is a French company founded in 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. It undertakes the operation and marketing of the Ariane programme. The company offers a number of different launch vehicles: the heavy ...

's Kourou spaceport in

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America in the Guianas. ...

. It consists of

microsatellites A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. ...

ELISA 1 (or ELISA W11,

COSPAR ID The International Designator, also known as COSPAR ID, is an international identifier assigned to artificial objects in space. It consists of the launch year, a three-digit incrementing launch number of that year and up to a three-letter code repr ...

: 2011-076A), ELISA 2 (or ELISA E12, COSPAR ID: 2011-076D), ELISA 3 (or ELISA W23, COSPAR ID: 2011-076C), and ELISA 4 (or ELISA E24, COSPAR ID: 2011-076B) The entire ELISA suite was launched on a single

Soyuz ST-A Soyuz-2 (GRAU index 14A14) is a modernized version of the Soviet Soyuz rocket. In its basic form, it is a three-stage launch vehicle for placing payloads into low Earth orbit. Compared to the previous versions of the Soyuz, the first-stage bo ...

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload ( spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and ...

, along with Pléiades-1 and SSOT. The ELISA programme is a demonstrator meant to pave the way for a planned Signals intelligence constellation called

CERES Ceres most commonly refers to: * Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid * Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres may also refer to: Places Brazil * Ceres, Goiás, Brazil * Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás ...

. The ELISA satellites are in a

Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

a few kilometres from each other to record

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

and

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

transmissions. Since 2014, they are used as a pre-operational system. The satellites are built around the

Myriade Myriade is a European miniaturized satellite platform developed by EADS Astrium and CNES. EADS Astrium offers the Myriade bus under the commercial name Astrosat-100. CNES began developing Myriade in 1998, as a continuation of the Proteus program. ...

microsatellite bus.

References

External links

* http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/elisa.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20161018011750/https://elisa.cnes.fr/en/web/CNES-en/5940-elisa.php * http://www.arianespace.com/press-release/arianespace-vso2-mission-soyuz-sta-orbits-pleiades-1a-elisa-and-ssot/ Reconnaissance satellites of France Signals intelligence satellites Spacecraft launched in 2011 Spacecraft launched by Soyuz-2 rockets Satellite constellations Military equipment introduced in the 2010s {{France-spacecraft-stub

See also

References

External links