Model answer

SPOT is the French Earth-observation satellite series (“Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre”).

Think of it as a smaller Landsat with two cool tricks:

• Tilting cameras — the sensor can swing sideways to image areas off the satellite’s path, which gets you stereo pairs (3D!) and faster revisit.
• Finer detail — 10 m panchromatic vs. Landsat’s 30 m.

Quirk to remember: SPOT 1, 2, and 3 have no blue band — only green, red, and NIR. So you can’t make a natural-color image from those satellites.

Series ran from 1986 (SPOT 1) to current SPOT 6/7.

🔬 Show the science / technical version

• French/European series from CNES; SPOT = Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre.
• SPOT 1–3 altitude 832 km sun-synchronous; SPOT 6/7 altitude 694 km.
• HRV bands: green, red, NIR (+SWIR on SPOT-4+); 10 m pan / 20 m MS.
• Off-nadir pointing (±27°) → stereo imagery + shorter revisit (1–4 days).