Astrium signs contract with South Korean space agency on business cooperation

European leading space company Astrium announced Wednesday the signing of a contract with South Korean Aerospace Research Institute(KARI), which will allow them to jointly design and manufacture Geostationary Ocean Color Imager II (GOCI-II) for the future Korean mission GEO Kompsat 2B. Compared to the GOCI first generation imager onboard the COMS satellite, which has been successfully operated by the South Korean space agency since its launch in 2010, GOCI-II offers significant advances: enhanced resolution (250 metres), 12 spectral bands and daily coverage of full disk Earth data, Astrium said in its newly released statement. Designed to provide detailed observations of the color of the seawater, the GOCI-II instrument will contribute to a number of services associated with fishing, ecology and meteorology, such as to determine the amount of chlorophyll in the water, differentiate plankton species, identify algae proliferations and determine available fishing resources, the space company added. "GOCI-II has been designed using the latest generation technologies developed by Astrium for space applications, including a seven-million pixel CMOS sensor, a silicon carbide telescope and a high-precision pointing mechanism," the statement said. Eric Beranger, CEO of Astrium Satellites, hailed the fruits of the cooperation between the two space companies. "This contract is also a great commercial success for Astrium, confirming our place as the world's leading exporter of Earth observation space systems," he said. The contract stipulates that six Korean engineers will help to develop the instrument at the Astrium site in Toulouse. Astrium has agreed to use South Korean industrial services amounting to 5 percent of the contract price. In addition, test resources made available by KARI at its Daejeon site in Korea will be used for environment testing," the European space technology company noted. The future Korean mission GEO Kompsat 2B is scheduled for launch in 2019.