PROBA-V | Belgian Platform on Earth Observation

PROBA-V is an ESA microsatellite from the PROBA family (Project for On-Board Autonomy with V standing for VEGETATION). It has been developed mainly by a Belgian consortium (QinetiQ Space, OIP, VITO) with a small contribution from among others Luxembourg and Canada, through the GSTP Programme of ESA.

A follow-up to the 17-year SPOT-VEGETATION mission

PROBA-V was initiated by Belgium as a gap filler mission between the French SPOT VEGETATION missions on board of SPOT 4 and 5 and ESA’s Sentinel 3 missions. It was designed to ensure continuity of global daily terrestrial vegetation data for the vegetation and land surface community who use the data for applications such as climate impact assessments, water resource management, deforestation, agricultural monitoring and food security estimates.

PROBA-V’s spectral channels are therefore similar to those of the SPOT VEGETATION instrument. However, benefiting from the technological developments since the SPOT-VEGETATION launch in 1998, PROBA-V spatial resolution now goes up to 100 m instead of 1 km.

PROBA-V was launched on 7 May 2013 and is planned to stay in operation until 30 June 2020. The operations are jointly managed through ESA’s Earthwatch Programme and the Belgian CVB programme. From 1 July 2020 until 30 October 2021, PROBA-V will keep acquiring data over the European and African continent, but in an 'experimental' mode.

The PROBA-V data are processed and archived by CVB and can be accessed via the Product Distribution Portal.

Derived biophysical products are produced by the Copernicus Global Land Service.