MONTREAL—Three Canadian satellites representing the next generation of Earth-observation technology have been successfully deployed after being launched into orbit today aboard a SpaceX rocket. The Canadian government’s RADARSAT Constellation project blasted off aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 10:17 a.m. The $1.2-billion government-owned project replaces the RADARSAT-2 satellite, which has been in orbit since 2007. Once fully operational later this year, the three evenly spaced satellites will orbit Earth every 96 minutes at an altitude of about 600 kilometres. They will work in tandem and are expected to generate 250,000 images per year — 50 times more than the first generation RADARSAT satellite.

Source: thestar June 12, 2019 15:56 UTC