First Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite (ETRSS-1): Mission information and overview

The amount and quality of land, water and atmospheric information is critical to plan, monitor, predict and mitigate the impacts of climate change, urbanization and population growth. To get reasonably accurate regional information, Ethiopia launched its first Earth Observing satellite on the 20thof December 2019 in collaboration with the government of China. The 65-kg Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite (ETRSS-1) carries one earth observing multispectral camera to measure many aspects of land, water and biosphere. It was placed on sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 628.61km and collects images at a Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of 13.75-m within a revisit period of 4 days. Currently, all the instruments are operating as intended and the early-stage images captured by ETRSS-1 are within sensible and acceptable range. This indicates that it can serve as a supplementary and alternative data source to operational and research services.