Ukraine and the Czech Republic are creating a Constellation optical reconnaissance satellite group.

The editor-in-chief of the Czech publication Armadni Novini reported about this in his blog on Militarnyi.

In October 2022, the governments of the Czech Republic and Ukraine reached a political agreement on the creation of a defense cluster, within which a Czech-Ukrainian cooperation project in the space sector was initiated, leading to the formation of the Constellation satellite monitoring group.

A key element of the group are TROLL-type satellites, to which future Czech-Ukrainian satellites will be added.

The first TROLL satellite, developed by the Czech company TRL Space, was launched into orbit in January of this year. Its main advantage is the integrated hyperspectral camera with a 10 cm lens diameter.

It is capable of capturing images of the Earth’s surface with a resolution of less than 5 meters per pixel (GSD – Ground Sample Distance).

The second element of the group will be the Drak satellite, which is being developed by companies within the Czech space cluster Brno Space Cluster. The main integrator of the project is TRL Space.

The Drak satellite is being created specifically for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in collaboration with Ukrainian specialists.

It is worth noting that the Drak differs from the TROLL. It will be built on a larger platform and equipped with a camera for visible spectrum operations with very high resolution — less than one meter per pixel.

For security reasons, the exact technical specifications are not disclosed.

The satellite belongs to the category of microsatellites, weighing between 50 and 150 kg.

Since the satellite’s size may help determine the parameters of its camera and other subsystems, this information is also not disclosed.

As previously reported, the European Ariane 6 rocket successfully launched the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite, a project jointly funded by France, Germany, and Belgium.

It is expected that the images collected by CSO-3 would be accessible not only to the French military but also to the German and Belgian armed forces, given their financial contributions to the project.

Also, since France has offered its reconnaissance data to Ukraine, there is a high likelihood that this satellite will assist the Ukrainian Defense Forces with satellite imagery.