RapidEye-a German commercial remote-sensing startup that's staking its future on supplying affordable wide-swath imagery with frequent revisits to geospa-tial-information users-will push its case following the successful launch of its space segment. The system, comprising five 150-kg. (330-lb.) spacecraft, was orbited by a Russian Dnepr-1 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on Aug. 29. Known as RapidEye, the constellation was built by MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) of Canada using a bus from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. of the U.K. and a payload supplied by Jena-Optronik of Germany.
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