The Earth Remote Observation System-B (EROS-B) is the second satellite launched in a series of the

EROS Eros (, ; ) is the Greek god of love and sex. The Romans referred to him as Cupid or Amor. In the earliest account, he is a primordial god, while in later accounts he is the child of Aphrodite. He is usually presented as a handsome young ma ...

family of Israeli commercial

Earth observation satellite An Earth observation satellite or Earth remote sensing satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth observation (EO) from orbit, including spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, me ...

s, designed and manufactured by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI). It is owned and operated by ImageSat International N.V. (ISI), in the

Netherlands Antilles The Netherlands Antilles (, ; ), also known as the Dutch Antilles, was a constituent Caribbean country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands consisting of the islands of Saba (island), Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten in the Lesser Antilles, ...

Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory, and the largest by population. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located so ...

, with offices in

Limassol Limassol, also known as Lemesos, is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the Limassol district. Limassol is the second-largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban population of 195,139 and a district population o ...

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

, and in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. ImageSat International announced that it had begun construction of "EROS B", a day before the launch of "EROS A". According to the plan, the launch of the "EROS B" was to take place in 2001, after which another 6 satellites in the series were planned. In July 2000, the company announced the completion of a capital raising of more than $90 million. A year later, it signed a $70 million credit agreement with

Bank Leumi Bank Leumi (, lit. ''National Bank''; ) is an Israeli bank. It was founded on February 27, 1902, in Jaffa as the ''Anglo Palestine Company'' as subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust () Limited formed before in London by members of the Zionism, ...

to finance the further development of the satellite series, and announced that the launch of the second satellite had been postponed to 2003. On July 28, 2001, IAI officially signed an agreement with ImageSat International to build the $110 million EROS B satellite. However the project was delayed due to difficulties in signing enough commercial customers to meet the financial costs.

Satellite description

The satellite is 2.3 m in height and 1.2 m in diameter. It weighed 350 kg at launch. The design of the satellite is based on the military reconnaissance satellite Ofeq-3, which was previously built, also by Israel Aerospace Industries for Israeli government use. ImageSat International estimates the satellite will work 14 years.

Control systems

The satellite is equipped with a 3-axis stabilized and a four reaction wheels actuator. The satellite is also equipped with a

star tracker A star tracker is an optical device that measures the positions of stars using photocells or a camera. As the positions of many stars have been measured by astronomers to a high degree of accuracy, a star tracker on a satellite or spacecraft may ...

, horizon sensor,

Sun sensor A Sun sensor is a navigational instrument used by spacecraft to detect the position of the Sun. Sun sensors are used for Spacecraft attitude control, attitude control, solar array pointing, gyroscope, gyro updating, and safe mode (spacecraft), fai ...

gyroscope A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining Orientation (geometry), orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in ...

and

magnetometer A magnetometer is a device that measures magnetic field or magnetic dipole moment. Different types of magnetometers measure the direction, strength, or relative change of a magnetic field at a particular location. A compass is one such device, ...

for altitude determination.

Ground communication systems

The satellite is equipped with an imagery link four times faster than the EROS-A at 280

Mbit/s In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multi ...

, a 15 kbit/s maintenance downlink, and a 15 kbit/s command uplink.

Launch

The EROS-B was launched on 25 April 2006, at 16:47:16

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

from

Svobodny Cosmodrome Svobodny () was a Russian rocket launch site located approximately 15 km north of Svobodny, Amur Oblast. The cosmodrome was originally constructed as a launch site for intercontinental ballistic missiles called ''Svobodny-18''. It was initi ...

, Launch Complex-5 in

eastern Siberia Eastern Siberia is a part of Siberia that incorporates the territory located between the Yenisei River in the west and the Pacific Ocean divides in the east. Its area is equal to 7.2 million sq. km.Galina Samoylova (Г. С. Самойлова)В� ...

. 3 days after the launch, ImageSat International announced that the satellite had begun sending images from space.

Mission

The satellite offers an

optical resolution Optical resolution describes the ability of an imaging system to resolve detail, in the object that is being imaged. An imaging system may have many individual components, including one or more lenses, and/or recording and display components. E ...

of , and as of launch date plans were to use it to monitor the developing of the

nuclear program of Iran The nuclear program of Iran is one of the most scrutinized nuclear programs in the world. The military capabilities of the program are possible through its mass enrichment activities in facilities such as Natanz and Arak. In June 2025, t ...

for potential threats to Israeli security. The satellite is equipped with a

charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...

(CDD) push broom scanner array, which provides 10,000 pixels per line and a total of 96 lines for selectable Time-Delay Integration (TDI) observation support. The satellite can be operated in both asynchronous and synchronous imaging mode. It has a

Ground sample distance In remote sensing, ground sample distance (GSD) in a digital photo of the ground from air or space is the distance between pixel centers measured on the ground. For example, in an image with a one-meter GSD, adjacent pixels image locations are 1 me ...

(GSD) of 0.70 m panchromatic imagery. Unlike the EROS A whose primary purpose is to support agricultural engineers, the EROS-B is more specifically designed for illegal construction supervision, general infrastructure monitoring, and emergency monitoring such as oil and gas exploration. EROS-B is the first commercial satellite to offer high spatial resolution images of night-time lights from space. On 27 June 2016, the safety was the topmost concern for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Rio 2016, ensuring that the people from every nation will be kept safe was a daunting task. To assist with this matter the Israeli satellite, EROS-B captured high-resolution images of up to 50 cm in an area of 450 km, thus enabling the identification of objects, people, cars, and goods. The announcement was made by Brazilian Defense Minister Raul Jungmann.

References