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BKA

BKA spacecraft

BKA/Kanopus-V spacecraft, © NAS, ROSCOSMOS

Mission description

BKA (formerly known as BelKa 2) is a Belarusian remote sensing satellite developed by VNIIEM Corporation under an agreement between the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NAS) and the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation.

The BKA satellite is almost an exact copy of the Russian Kanopus-Vulkan N1 Environmental Satellite (Kanopus-V 1) and was launched on July 22, 2012 simultaneously with the Kanopus-V 1 satellite. These satellites are in the same orbit at opposite points and they carry similar sensors.

Table 1 provides a summary of the BKA mission.

Parameter Specifications
EO Mission BKA
Mission Short name BKA
Charter Owner Agency NAS
Providing Agency NAS
Date of launch 22/07/2012
Temporal coverage 2012 - present
Mission status onGoing
Mission duration 8 years
Orbit Height 510 km
Inclination 97.4 deg

Table 1 - BKA mission parameters.

Instrument

BKA is equipped with a 2.1m panchromatic imager and a 10.5m multispectral imager1. Table 2 describes the spectral combinations of the BKA products often received in the Charter.

Acronym Instrument Spectral Mode Spectral Combination
PSS Panchromatic Imaging System PAN Panchromatic single band (PAN)
MSS Multispectral Imaging System MUL Multispectral 4 bands (Blue, Green, Red and NIR)

Table 2 - BKA instruments and spectral combinations.

Spectral modes and bands

PAN

Table 3 reports technical specifications for the BKA PSS instrument in PAN mode.

Parameter Specifications
Instrument PSS
Imager Type Panchromatic Imaging System
Spectral mode PAN
Scanning technique Pushbroom mode observation
Resolution High Resolution - O-MR (1 - 4m)
GSD 2.1 m (nadir)
Swath 23 km
Dynamic range 10 bits per pixel
Revisit 5 days
Data type L1A, L1B, or L1C

Table 3 - BKA PSS instrument technical specifications.

Wavelength, Center wavelength, Bandwidth (or FWHM), and common band name (CBN) for each spectral band of the BKA PSS sensor in PAN mode are described in Table 4.

Spectral Band (ID) Spectral interval (nm) Center Wavelength(µm) Bandwidth or FWHM (µm) CBN
BAND1 (PAN) 520-860 0.660 0.208 pan

Table 4 - Spectral bands for a BKA PSS product.

MUL

Table 5 reports technical specifications for the BKA MSS instrument in PAN mode.

Parameter Specifications
Instrument MSS
Imager Type Multispectral Imaging System
Spectral mode MUL
Scanning technique Pushbroom mode observation
Resolution Medium Resolution - 0-MR (4 - 25m)
GSD 10.5 m (nadir)
Swath 40 km
Dynamic range 10 bits per pixel
Revisit 5 days
Data type L1A, L1B, or L1C

Table 5 - BKA MSS instrument technical specifications.

Wavelength, Center wavelength, Bandwidth (or FWHM), and common band name (CBN) for each spectral band of the BKA MSS sensor in MUL mode are described in Table 6.

Spectral Band (ID) Spectral interval (nm) Center Wavelength(µm) Bandwidth or FWHM (µm) CBN
MS3 (Blue) 450-520 0.492 0.04 blue
MS2 (Green) 510-610 0.558 0.07 green
MS1 (Red) 640-700 0.675 0.09 red
MS4 (NIR) 730-860 0.782 0.1 nir

Table 6 - Spectral bands for a BKA MSS product.

Geometric and radiometric processing

Processing levels of BKA products are:

  • L1A bundle of photos with RPC,

  • L1B georeferenced,

  • L1C orthorectified.

BKA products contain: preview, vector footprint, and metadata files. For L1B and L1C products, the PAN data is given as a single band grayscale at 8 bits and the MUL data is given as a 4-band composite (RGBN) at 8 bits.

Imagery and metadata formats

BKA's imagery format is GeoTIFF. Annotation is delivered in XML format.

Ingested format

Information extracted from product annotation included in the STAC item of a BKA L1C MSS dataset are listed below.

Properties

STAC item content about properties for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "properties": {
    "datetime": "2015-09-24T04:43:01Z",
    "created": "2023-11-08T15:20:38.8820805Z",
    "platform": "bka",
    "constellation": "bka/kanopus-v",
    "mission": "bka",
    "instruments": [
      "mss"
    ],
    "sensor_type": "optical",
    "spectral_mode": "MUL",
    "gsd": 10.52,
    "title": "BKA MSS L1C 2015-09-24 04:43:01",
    "providers": [
      {
        "name": "NAS",
        "description": "BKA (formerly known as BelKa 2) is a Belarusian remote sensing satellite developed under an agreement between the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NAS) and the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation. The BKA satellite is almost an exact copy of the Russian Kanopus-Vulkan N1 Environmental Satellite (Kanopus-V 1).",
        "roles": [
          "producer",
          "processor",
          "licensor"
        ],
        "url": "https://gis.by/en/tech/bka/"
      },
      {
        "name": "NAS",
        "roles": [
          "licensor"
        ]
      }
    ],
    "licence": "proprietary",
    "disaster:call_ids": [
      968
    ],
    "disaster:resolution_class": "MR",
    "cpe:cos2_id": "968-4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID",  
  }

Satellite

STAC item content about Satellite for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "properties": {
    "sat:platform_international_designator": "2012-039B"   
}

Processing

STAC item content about Processing for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "properties": {
    "processing:level": "L1C"
  }

Projection

STAC item content about Projection for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "properties": {
    "proj:epsg": 32748,
    "proj:shape": [
      6791,
      3052
    ]
  }

View

STAC item content about View for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "properties": {
    "view:azimuth": 84.08
  }

Geometry

STAC item content about Geometry for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "geometry": {
    "type": "Polygon",
    "coordinates": [
      [
        [
          106.57943576,
          -6.53408095
        ],
        [
          106.75134549,
          -6.50028809
        ],
        [
          106.63111111,
          -5.88778429
        ],
        [
          106.459375,
          -5.92148926
        ],
        [
          106.57943576,
          -6.53408095
        ]
      ]
    ]
  },
  "bbox": [
    106.459375,
    -6.53408095,
    106.75134549,
    -5.88778429
  ]

Assets

STAC item content about assets (annotation, quicklooks and spectral bands files harvested from the source product) and EO bands for a BKA L1C MSS Dataset is the following:

  "assets": {
    "L1C_MUL": {
      "type": "image/tiff; application=geotiff",
      "roles": [
        "data",
        "dn"
      ],
      "title": "L1C MUL",
      "href": "https://.../4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID/L1C_MUL.tif",
      "filename": "4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID.tif",
      "file:size": 84189866,
      "eo:bands": [
        {
          "name": "MS3",
          "common_name": "blue",
          "center_wavelength": 0.492,
          "full_width_half_max": 0.04
        },
        {
          "name": "MS2",
          "common_name": "green",
          "center_wavelength": 0.558,
          "full_width_half_max": 0.07
        },
        {
          "name": "MS1",
          "common_name": "red",
          "center_wavelength": 0.675,
          "full_width_half_max": 0.09
        },
        {
          "name": "MS4",
          "common_name": "nir",
          "center_wavelength": 0.782,
          "full_width_half_max": 0.1
        }
      ],
      "raster:bands": [
        {
          "data_type": "int8",
          "offset": 0
        },
        {
          "data_type": "int8",
          "offset": 0
        },
        {
          "data_type": "int8",
          "offset": 0
        },
        {
          "data_type": "int8",
          "offset": 0
        }
      ]
    },
    "metadata": {
      "type": "application/xml",
      "roles": [
        "metadata"
      ],
      "href": "https://.../4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID/metadata.xml",
      "filename": "4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID_pasp-en.xml",
      "file:size": 4652
    },
    "overview": {
      "type": "image/jpeg",
      "roles": [
        "overview"
      ],
      "href": "https://.../4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID/overview.jpg",
      "filename": "4077631-0220-MUL-C-1-1-1100761-150924T044238-ID_preview.jpg",
      "file:size": 138091
    }
  }

Product Calibration

For BKA products calibration refer to the Optical Products Calibration (OPT-Calib) service and the calibration sheet available here.

  1. NAS, GIS, available at: https://gis.by. ↩