Interesting speculations, but that&#x27;s not how these environmental monitoring satellites work.  They are set up to get global coverage with this instrument every 5 days.  The orbit is chosen so that this happens, to enable long-term time series of vegetation, land cover, etc., as you note.<p>It&#x27;s a successor to other satellites like SPOT, and a competitor&#x2F;complement to NASA satellites like MODIS.