Spirale is a French government programme to develop an early warning system which will use infrared satellite imagery to detect the flights of ballistic missiles during their boost phase, just after launch. ^[1] SPIRALE is an acronym which stands for " Systeme Preparatoire Infra-Rouge pour l’ALErte ", literally "infrared preparatory system for alert".

The demonstrator system includes two 120 kilograms (260 lb) microsatellites and an alert and monitoring ground segment . The satellites have been launched by Ariane 5 on 12 February 2009.

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