ELISA (satellite)

ELISA(ELectronic Intelligence by SAtellite) is a suite of four Frenchmilitary satelliteslaunched on 17 December 2011 fromArianespace'sKourou spaceportinFrench Guiana. It consists ofmicrosatellitesELISA 1(orELISA W11,COSPAR ID:2011-076A),ELISA 2(orELISA E12,COSPAR ID: 2011-076D),ELISA 3(orELISA W23,COSPAR ID: 2011-076C), andELISA 4(orELISA E24,COSPAR ID: 2011-076B)

The entire ELISA suite was launched on a singleSoyuz ST-Alaunch vehicle,along withPléiades-1andSSOT. The ELISA program is ademonstratormeant to pave the way for a plannedSignals intelligenceconstellation calledCERES.The ELISA satellites are in aLow Earth orbita few kilometers from each other to recordradarandradiotransmissions. Since 2014, they have been used as a pre-operational system.

The satellites are built around theMyriademicrosatellite bus.

See also

• ESSAIM- another French military SIGINT microsatellite project
• CERES- the follow-on French space-based SIGINT program

External links

• http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/elisa.htm
• https://web.archive.org/web/20161018011750/https://elisa.cnes.fr/en/web/CNES-en/5940-elisa.php
• http://www.arianespace.com/press-release/arianespace-vso2-mission-soyuz-sta-orbits-pleiades-1a-elisa-and-ssot/