![]() “It will also enable us to see what is going on around our borders.” The satellite “will make it possible to see what is going on in the country, particularly regarding the weather, and it is also important for our agriculture,” said Morocco’s EU ambassador Ahmed Réda Chami last month in Brussels. “This is all part of a culture of secrecy, which serves to instill a menacing atmosphere, without being directly threatening,” said Florence Sborowsky, researcher at France’s Strategic Research Foundation (FRS). To this day, neither the national space agency nor the government have officially communicated about it. Even after the launch of the Mohammed-VI four years later, the spacecraft’s technical capacities remain shrouded in mystery. The images will be collected and analysed by a team of experts in Rabat.įrance and Morocco sealed the contract, valued at 500 million euros, behind closed doors in 2013, during the former French president François Hollande’s visit to Morroco. Once they are operational, these ‘spy’ satellites will have the capacity to take up to 500 photos a day. The second satellite will be launched in 2018. The satellite is the first example of a system comprising of two satellites with a 5-year lifespan, placed in orbit 694 kms from the Earth. ![]() The Mohammed-VI A was built by the Franco-Tunisian consortium Thales Alenia Space and Airbus. “It is true that, if the evolution of road and rail networks can be observed, the Pléiades satellites may be used for secret intelligence,” explained Françoise Masson, head of the CNES Pléiades project. According to the CNES, France’s National Centre for Space Studies, these kinds of high-resolution images - based on the French imagery system Pléiades - “can also help to identify military installations in enemy countries in order to plan a military intervention.” Moroccan officials insist the spacecraft will be used for civilian purposes but the satellite inevitably has military applications also. Morocco is the first African nation to acquire such a powerful surveillance aircraft. Images from the powerful Earth observation satellite have a 70 cm resolution and can be taken from anywhere on the globe in less than 24 hours. Not so for Morocco, which kept secret the acquisition of its first high-resolution satellite, the Mohammed-VI A, until its launch on the night of November 7 from Kourou in French Guiana. Buying a satellite is usually a sign of a nation’s power, something to brag about.
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