RapidEye Nearly Open for Business

RapidEye's satellite system has successfully completed all post-launch testing and calibration activities, and is now ready to take on commercial operations. The satellite constellation was successfully launched in August 2008. Since that time, RapidEye\'s prime contractor, MDA (MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.) has been conducting the commissioning period on both the space and ground segment in which system performance and product quality were thoroughly measured, analysed and verified.  

The company can begin selling their data products, and can integrate the imagery into the services they are currently working on.

Paulo E. Cruvinel, Researcher from EMBRAPA - Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation and Executive Coordinator of RIPA - Agribusiness Technological Innovation and Prospecting Network explains what impact the collaboration with RapidEye will have on their research program. "EMBRAPA continuously invests in strategic areas to get transit on knowledge frontiers and new technologies generation. This effort seeks to its institutional architecture in order to achieve more agility and flexibility for better interacting with public and private innovation networks and proper respond to new demands of the agriculture growth. With RapidEye being fully operational, we can better support Government needs, implementing projects related to agrometeorologic risk management and to monitor the environmental dimensions of the sustainability in tropical agriculture."