PROBA-V successor phase 0 Final Report

The current PROBA-V system is a global land monitoring mission with the prime aim of achieving data continuity for the user of SPOT-VEGETATION data. PROBA-V has been launched on May 7th 2013, to continue the observation timeline of SPOT-VEGETATION. PROBA-V has experienced a quasi-perfection injection and will thus be in an acceptable orbit for its extended mission lifetime of 5 years. The expected mission lifetime thus expires by mid of 2018. Since the interest for global land monitoring is only expected to continue in the future, this study wants to define the mission requirements and possible mission scenarios for a follow-on mission.
The goal of such a new PROBA-V mission is clear: it should ensure the data continuity of global vegetation monitoring, while taking the opportunity to further improve the data quality - provided the added value can be motivated. Data continuity is essential for understanding long term trends of land use that may affect the global equilibrium of the planet (in the context of scarcity for land or food, natural disasters, climate change). As for added value, a fine example is the improvement of spatial resolution when comparing PROBA-V with the spatial resolution in SPOT-VEGETATION products. Indeed, as will be shown in chapter 2, an improvement in spatial resolution towards a full 100m product is considered by the user community as the main target for a PROBA-V follow-on mission.