CNESMAG 79 - Defence : space in demand

On 22 February 1986, more than 30 years ago, the launch of SPOT 1, the nation’s first Earth-observation satellite conceived and developed by CNES, immediately caught the attention of our armed forces. They subsequently decided to invest in their own space-based observation assets and since 1995, the Helios satellites—recently joined by CSO-1, the first of their successors—are our ‘military eyes’.