Mantis Imager

The Mantis Imager is a CubeSat-class pushbroom imaging sensor developed by Dragonfly Aerospace. It occupies a 1U form factor, weighs 0.5 kg, and draws 6 W. At 500 km the instrument delivers 16 m ground sample distance in panchromatic mode and 32 m in multispectral and hyperspectral modes. Ground swath is 32 km.

The Mantis is software-defined and configures as RGB, 6-band multispectral, or hyperspectral. Publicly available sources report differing hyperspectral band counts: SatCatalog lists 96 bands ^[1], while a 2021 launch article from Space in Africa cites 160 hyperspectral bands. ^[2] The discrepancy likely reflects different product versions or software-selectable configurations; both values are noted here without a definitive resolution. Bit depth is 12 bits.

Spectral range in nanometres has not been published in accessible sources as of 2026-05-28; dragonflyaerospace.com returned access errors at research time. The instrument operates in the VNIR portion of the spectrum based on its optical design class.

The Mantis achieved orbital flight heritage in June 2021, launched on the NanoAvionics D2/AtlaCom-1 6U CubeSat to a 525 km sun-synchronous orbit as part of the HyperActive mission. ^[2]

The imager is offered as a configurable, software-reconfigurable payload component targeting CubeSat operators requiring scalable multispectral to hyperspectral imaging in a compact 1U package.