NanoSatelity is the third product in the Elf family, alongside VineyardElf and WineryElf. It gives you a view of your vineyard from orbit - literally.
We use free data from the Sentinel-2 satellite (the Copernicus programme, ESA). The satellite passes over Europe every 2-5 days and photographs the surface in multiple spectral bands, including near-infrared. From those bands we compute indices that tell you about the condition of your plants - without walking between the rows.
What the satellite measures
The core index is NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). It is calculated from two bands: red (B04) and near-infrared (B08). Healthy, green plants reflect infrared strongly, while stressed or dry ones reflect it weakly. Hence the scale:
- below 0.2 - bare ground, no vegetation
- 0.2-0.4 - weak vegetation, early spring or stress
- 0.4-0.6 - moderate condition
- above 0.6 - lush, healthy vegetation
Besides NDVI we also measure NDWI (water stress) and NDMI (leaf moisture). Together they give a complete picture of what is happening across the vineyard.
Resolution
Sentinel-2 photographs at a resolution of 10 metres per pixel. For a 0.5-hectare vineyard that is roughly 50 pixels - enough to see differences between parcels, but not individual rows. That is why NanoSatelity works best for comparing blocks and tracking changes over time.
Where the data comes from
We pull the data from Copernicus Dataspace - ESA’s official platform. The free tier provides 30,000 processing units per month, which is enough for daily monitoring of several vineyards. No hardware is required - just an account at dataspace.copernicus.eu.