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for Europe, Africa and the Middle East ; in Sweden for midday 
orbits and coverage of North and South America ; in Toulouse 
for evening passes over Asia and Oceania (Figure 5). 
  
Figure 5: the 3 Pléiades' daily collection plans 
This enables us to task users' requests up to two hours before 
satellite pass, thus reducing the lead time between tasking 
requests and image acquisition to a minimum. 
It should be noted that the splitting into 3 parts of the daily 
collection plan also increases the global efficiency of the whole 
satellite system: using 3 different weather forecasts a day results 
into a more precise prediction of cloud position under the orbit, 
hence optimising the probability of getting cloud-free images. 
4.2 Direct tasking: Reactivity at customer’s hand 
Pléiades customers with receiving stations configured for direct 
tasking will be able to refine tasking plans at the last moment 
(30 minutes prior to satellite arrival above the cone) according 
to the latest weather forecasts or emergency requests. 
5. GROUND PROCESSING: A SPEED-UP STORY 
A lot of work has gone into designing image production 
systems. The fully automatic orthorectification process is 
capable of generating a 20 km x 20 km Pléiades colour image in 
less than 30 minutes and a single-pass mosaic of 60 km x 60 km 
in less than 3 hours. 
On the user side, everything from ordering to data delivery has 
been made as flexible and easy as possible. New acquisitions, 
catalogue data, subscription offers, collection alerts, online 
monitoring services and more mean that imagery is just a click 
away, ready to use. 
6. CONCLUSION 
The consecutive launches of Pléiades-1 & 2 and SPOT-6 & 7 
signal a paradigm shift in the world of Earth Observation 
services. We are now fully ready to operate a coherent, 
optimized multi-resolution constellation of 4 satellites that will 
deliver to the users a high level of performance: revisit, 
collection capability, responsiveness, accuracy... 
Last but not least, this constellation will ensure continuity of 
service up to 2023, securing the users’ investments into VHR 
data. 
Acknowledgments: the authors would like to thank all the 
teams who contributed to the success of Pléiades during the 
conception, launch and calibration phases, especially our 
colleagues from CNES and ASTRIUM (satellite branch). 
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