ELISA (satellite)

ELISA 1 (aka ELISA W11, COSPAR ID: 2011-076A), ELISA 2 (aka ELISA E12, COSPAR ID: 2011-076D), ELISA 3 (aka ELISA W23, COSPAR ID: 2011-076C) and ELISA 4 (aka ELISA E24, COSPAR ID: 2011-076B) are a suite of French military satellites (ELISA stands for ELectronic Intelligence by SAtellite) launched on 17 December 2011 from Arianespace's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The ELISA suite are microsatellites and thus all four were launched on a single Soyuz ST-A launch vehicle, along with Pléiades-1 and SSOT. The ELISA programme is a demonstration system to pave the way for a planned radar monitoring system called CERES. The ELISA satellites are in a Low Earth orbit a few kilometres from each other to record radar and radio transmissions. Since 2014, they are used as a pre-operational system.[1]

The satellites are built around the Myriade microsatellite bus.

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

References
  1. "Hearing of the French Space Command Chief by the National Assembly".
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