Airbus Pléiades Neo Next satellite launching in 2028
January 27, 2026
With the Pléiades Neo Next programme, Airbus says it is reinforcing its Earth Observation capabilities and services “to remain at the forefront of geospatial technologies”. This new programme will result in new satellite assets and capabilities, including 20-cm-class native resolution.
“The Pléiades Neo Next programme builds on the success of our existing Pléiades Neo constellation which serves government and commercial customers around the world,” commented Eric Even, Head of Space Digital at Airbus Defence and Space. “This programme will further enhance our standard of excellence in terms of quality, performance, and reliability to deliver images as well as geo-intelligence services and applications.”
The Pléiades Neo Next programme is funded, manufactured and operated by Airbus Defence and Space, with the full image capacity available for a wide range of sectors including defence and intelligence, agriculture, environment, maritime, disaster response, mapping, location-based services, civil engineering, urban planning and utilities.
Users will continue to be able to directly task the Airbus satellites up to a few dozen minutes prior to the satellite over the area of interest. Images will be received through the customer’s Direct Receiving Stations (DRS) on the ground, or on the OneAtlas digital platform, swiftly after collection, allowing mission-critical applications.
Working together, the Pléiades Neo and Pléiades Neo Next satellites will offer a higher revisit anywhere on Earth, up to several times per day, along with the best spatial resolution and geolocation accuracy available in the market. In addition to enhanced native resolution, Pléiades Neo Next development will further improve the ground segment, the DRS and the OneAtlas platform, resulting in a higher capacity of imagery requests as well as optimising the time between request, capture and reception.
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