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(May 2015) GAF AG, Germany and its partner Sofreco, France, are pleased to announce the awarding of the “Renforcement des Capacités de l’ Administration des Mines” contract and the initiation of activities in Gabon. The client and beneficiary is the Ministry of Mines, Industry and Tourism in Gabon. The project has been launched as a response to Gabon’s request for assistance in developing its mineral sector.

The project addresses a challenging portfolio of activities in the field of geological and environmental mapping, mineral potential assessment and institutional strengthening.

The key aspects include:

  • Geological and geotechnical mapping of the cities of Libreville and Owendo
  • Mapping of environmentally sensitive areas in the whole of Gabon
  • Synthesis of a metallogenic map of Gabon
  • Provision of support in promoting the use of mining and geological data, and establishment of procedures and facilities via which operators can obtain mining and geological data
  • Supporting of integration regarding the Kimberley process
  • Institutional and technical capacity building activities

The overall aim is to make the mining sector more attractive to private sector investment. This will strengthen the contribution of Gabon’s mining sector to economic development. The assignment is well-suited to GAF, which has a track-record of more than 20 years of experience in the provision of institutional and technical assistance in mining sector governance programmes via its consultancy services and cutting-edge software solutions. The project has a duration of two years and is part of the “PROGRAMME D’APPUI A LA GOUVERNANCE SECTORIELLE (PAGOS)” that supports mining sector governance in Gabon. It is financed by the European Union through the 10th European Development Fund.

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e-GEOS provided oil reports, based on satellite RADAR data from COSMO-SkyMed constellation, which identified and measured the oil slicks at sea, less than ten hours after the oil pollution at sea was published on the news.

The production teams have been working day and night to perform geospatial analysis and monitor the oil spill evolution of the newly acquired satellite data over Santa Barbara coastal area in California. The nine-mile Santa Barbara beach hit by an oil spill on Tuesday 19th of May. Up to 2,500 barrels (105,000 gallons) of crude petroleum gushed onto San Refugio State Beach and into the Pacific Ocean about 20 miles (32 km) west of Santa Barbara on Tuesday when an underground pipeline that runs along the coastal highway burst.

The pipe was carrying about 2,000 barrels of oil an hour, according to Plains All American, the company who owns the pipeline.

e-GEOS provides Rapid Maps to better coordinate the response actions when an emergnecy occurs, wherever in the world.

e-GEOS info on demand service — triggered soon after the oil spill impacted the sea — brought important benefits by providing impact assessments from satellite images and geospatial analysis to facilitate disaster management. Less than ten hours from the activation , the e-GEOS Emergency Team provided the first analysis results, keeping monitoring the situation from space for several days.

This page shows the Oil reports based on COSMO-SkyMed acquisitions made over Santa Barbara in the days since the oil spill occurred.

The first analysis was perform by using two COSMO-SkyMed Stripmap HIMAGE data (5 m resolution) to detect the oil floating on the sea surface close to Refugio State Beach towards Santa Barbara.

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LONGMONT, Colo.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Jun. 22, 2015— The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI) have partnered to release an open source software toolkit designed to harness the power of crowdsourced mapping for Geospatial Big Data Analytics. The open source project Hootenanny provides a scalable processing engine and interactive editing interface to enable rapid conflation of map features generated from satellite imagery, UAVs, and mobile devices.

In less than a decade crowdsourced mapping communities like OpenStreetMap™ have attracted over 2.5 million volunteers who have digitized more than 130 million buildings and 1.3 million miles of roads. Countless other organizations and individuals are using satellite imagery and other methods to capture the geometry and metadata of roads, buildings, and points of interest. To create high-quality maps and enable analytic functions like routing, suitability analysis, or predictive modeling it is important to unify multiple sources to create the best available database.

“The commercialization of GEOINT is leading to exponential growth of publicly available geospatial information,” said Chris Rasmussen, NGA’s public software development lead. “Hootenanny as an open source project will enable new levels of data sharing across the community that will increase our nation’s ability to quickly respond to emerging threats. This is a pro-active move that steers into the collaborative mapping environment to derive more value from unclassified sources.”

Hootenanny leverages the open architecture of OpenStreetMap™ to facilitate integration of diverse geospatial datasets into a common key value data structure. An open library of conflation algorithms applies various techniques to unify the geometry and metadata of topographic features. Conflicts can be visualized and resolved through an interactive application built on the iD Editor, an open source map editing tool developed by Mapbox. Conflated datasets can be exported in a variety of GIS formats including ESRI Shapefile, File Geodatabase, Web Feature Service, and native OpenStreetMap™ formats. Hootenanny also enables Geospatial Extract Transform Load (ETL) capabilities supporting various schemas such as Topographic Data Store (TDS), and Multi-National Geospatial Co-Production Program (MGCP).

“DigitalGlobe is rapidly evolving our business beyond satellite imagery into the world of Geospatial Big Data,” said Tony Frazier, SVP U.S. Government Solutions at DigitalGlobe. “Our human geography product contains over 1.6 million POIs aggregated across 1,500 unique sources. Hootenanny will help us more effectively fuse the data we extract from our imagery with other sources of publically available information.”

Hootenanny is available at: https://github.com/ngageoint/hootenanny. The software use, modification, and distribution rights are stipulated within the General Public License (GPL). DigitalGlobe and NGA will be hosting a Hootenanny MeetUp at the Washington D.C. Convention Center on Wednesday, June 24 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET in Room 143A.

About DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe is a leading provider of commercial high-resolution earth observation and advanced geospatial solutions that help decision makers better understand our changing planet in order to save lives, resources and time. Sourced from the world’s leading constellation, our imagery solutions deliver unmatched coverage and capacity to meet our customers’ most demanding mission requirements. Each day customers in defense and intelligence, public safety, civil agencies, map making and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, navigation technology, and providers of location-based services depend on DigitalGlobe data, information, technology and expertise to gain actionable insight.

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NEVASCO as framework (infrastructure, platform, organisation) focused on services and services on the market. It is not a data infrastructure.

By focusing on the market services are NEVASCO eminently able to specify aspects of the need for satellite data (type, time, format, quantity, standards, compatibility, etc.). With these specifications, the data infrastructure (which is focused on the supply of satellite data) be developed further.

An organised data infrastructure is essential for NEVASCO because the data intake depends on it. This involves satellite data from it to make it available from the Copernicus Sentinels, but other – institutional and commercial – (EO) satellites. Or that should be in the form of a national Copernicus Collaborative Ground Segment or in any other way, must be examined. This question can only be adequately answered on the basis of specific requests from the market and the strategic goal of the company and its customers.

Because many information ultimately based not only on satellite data but also use other forms of geo-information is a reconciliation of the satellite data infrastructure to broader geo-information infrastructures of great importance. Important for NEVASCO is also connected to the (geo-) information infrastructure of the customer.

Cooperating companies will develop an operational service platform and infrastructure. The cooperative organisation will be strong enough to act as contract partner for large private and public user organisations. This might turn out to be an interesting model for other European countries as well.

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Just few weeks ago ESA’s Sentinel-2A satellite was successfully launched into orbit. First images taken by the Multispectral Instrument (MSI) on-board Sentinel-2A have now been published.

MSI has 13 spectral bands, from the visible to the shortwave infrared at different spatial resolutions (10, 20 and 60 meters). The MSI imageries are free of charge and are particularly well suited for land monitoring services.


Po Valley, Italy, as seen from MSI on-board Sentinel-2A (© esa)

DHI GRAS is already now looking forward to getting hands on the new data to offer improved solutions and products such as satellite derived bathymetry, marine habitat maps (coral reefs, Posidonia etc.), monitoring of water quality and turbidity at high spatial resolution, information on vegetation phenology as well as indicators for crop growth, condition and health.

Sentinel-2A provides global coverage of the Earth’s land surface every 10 days and once the twin satellite Sentinel-2B will be in orbit (launch scheduled for 2016) optical imagery can be obtained every 2-3 days at mid-latitudes. Currently, MSI is being calibrated during a three month commissioning phase.

For more information and images please visit

Harwell, June 05 th 2015- Deimos Space UK Ltd and MBRSC (Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre) are pleased to announce that they plan to proceed with a project co-funded by MBRSC and the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Space Programme (IPSP).

The project ‘SAFIY’ (Smart Application for Feature extraction & 3D modelling using high resolution satellite Imagery) will use Earth Observation (EO) data to monitor, and detect changes in vegetation, water, road networks and buildings in support of the Dubai “smart government” initiative.

This project will develop mapping applications that utilise DubaiSat-2 and DEIMOS-2 high resolution optical data to improve the efficiency and accuracy of many routine tasks carried out by Government agencies. Safiy represents the co-operation and friendship that this project can bring to the organisations working together in Dubai and the UK.

Miguel Bello, Group CEO of Elecnor Deimos, commented “this project is an excellent opportunity for the UK and Dubai to forge closer links in the exciting domain of satellite applications. Elecnor Deimos is committed to ensuring that the project will have a successful outcome for both the UK and Dubai, in line with the aims of the UK Space Agency’s IPSP programme. Elecnor Deimos sees many other opportunities to make use of the technology being developed in the SAFIY project for the benefit of other regions around the world”

Deimos Space UK Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Elecnor Deimos created in 2013 to address the UK and export market for space systems, services and applications. Deimos provides complete solutions to customers all around the world with a portfolio of EO products including data from two satellites, DEIMOS-1 (22 m resolution) and DEIMOS-2 (75 cm resolution). Typical applications include: products and services for agriculture, forestry, disaster monitoring, land use, surveillance, intelligence, etc.

The MBRSC was created and established by the Dubai Government in 2006 to drive the vision for a knowledge economy in the UAE and support advancing sustainable development. The institution is integral to the strategic initiative put in place by the government to inspire scientific innovation, technological advancement, and to advance sustainable development in Dubai and the wider UAE.

Salem Al Marri, Assitant Director General for Scientific and Technical Affairs, MBRSC stated “The ‘SAFIY’ project is indeed an example of cooperation between two countries to further develop the space & satellite sector. It will also test our capabilities to ensure that we are at the peak of our industry, along our partners in the UK, building on the technology we have in place to date. MBRSC is the leader in Earth observation satellite technology in the Middle East and as such must be involved in such advanced partnerships with international entities to continue being positioned as leaders in satellite applications in the region“

MBRSC aims to develop the scientific skills and knowledge of Emiratis. It is mainly involved in outer space research and development; satellite manufacturing and systems development; space imaging; and ground station services and support for other satellites. MBRSC will oversee preparations and implementation of all phases of the UAE probe exploration mission to Mars. MBRSC is working on all projects related to science and applications of satellites, as well as other advanced technology projects.

IPSP was launched by the UK Space Agency in November 2014 as a two-year £32 million programme designed to enable UK satellite and other space sector companies to develop international partnerships for mutual benefit.

The agreement between the UK Space Agency and Deimos was signed by David Parker, CEO of the UK Space Agency and Philip Davies, Managing Director of Deimos Space UK Ltd. The signing took place at the Global Space & Satellite Forum (GSSF) in Abu Dhabi and was witnessed by Chris Lee, Head of International Space Policy at the UK Space Agency and Salem Humaid AlMarri, Assistant Director General, Scientific & Technology Affairs at the MBRSC.

Source: Deimos Space UK Ltd and Deimos Space SP
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Deimos-2 is taking part in a number of major international projects and services, such as becoming Copernicus contributing mission and starting a fully coverage of Europe. The satellite has also captured images of recent events such as the Ebro river flooding near Zaragoza in Spain, the eruption of the volcano Calbuco in Chile and the Oleg Naydenov ship oil spill in the Atlantic Ocean.

(Madrid, 19 June 2015) Deimos-2, the first Spanish Very High Resolution Earth Observation satellite and the first 100%-privately funded European satellite, celebrates the first anniversary of its 2014 launch on Friday, 19 June. The satellite, which is owned by Elecnor and operated by its technological division Elecnor Deimos, has travelled around the Earth approximately 5,300 times during this year. This represents a cumulative journey of over 230 million kilometres, which is more than 560 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon and almost 1,5 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

During that time, the satellite has recorded a total of 18,000 images, covering an area of 3,2 million sq. km almost 6 times Spain surface area. These very high-resolution images are particularly suitable for obtaining territorial information that is applied in a variety of different fields of activity: agriculture, the environment, climate change, safety, deforestation, management of water resources and supporting the management of crises arising from natural disasters.

Deimos-2 very high resolution services

The range of services currently offered by the Deimos-2 satellite is completed by those provided by Deimos-1 that can be grouped in three main areas: Agriculture, Forestry and Emergencies Services.

*Key Projects *

Deimos-2’s advanced capabilities have resulted in its participation in a number of major international projects and services. Currently, the satellite is part of the EU and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Copernicus Emergency Management Services, covering emergency responses. Deimos-2 is also a key player in the CORE datasets of the Copernicus Data Warehouse,managed by ESA, carrying out a complete submetric mapping of Europe.

The recent events that have been followed via the images provided by Deimos-2 include:


Ebro river flooding (from end of February to early March 2015, Fig.1)


Calbuco volcano eruption, Chile (April 2015, Fig.2)


Oleg Naydenov ship oil spill, Atlantic Ocean (April 2015, Fig.3)


Succesfully depicting the IXV Campaign (February 2015, Fig.5)

(Madrid, 22 de junio de 2015) Elecnor Deimos, the technological arm of Elecnor Group, has played a major role in the implementation of the Sentinel-2 ESA mission.

Developed for the operational needs of the Copernicus program (formerly GMES), Sentinel-2 will deliver high-resolution optical images for land services, providing, for example, imagery of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas, as well as information for emergency services.

Elecnor Deimos involvement started at the early phases of the mission, undertaking the mission analysis in the GMES Architecture study, has continued during the implementation phase and will extend with the support to its operations.

As a key activity, Deimos is providing support to the Sentinel-2 team at ESRIN, will a collocated team of up to three engineers working in the design and supervision of the PDGS contract.

Elecnor Deimos is responsible for the development of one of the most critical elements of the Ground Segment, the Mission-Planning System (S2MP). The S2MP is in charge of the Sentinel-2 mission plan generation for imagery acquisition, payload calibration and the associated on-board data management activities and subsequent data downlink activities to ground-stations and/or EDRS.

S2MP is designed to work with multiple operational scenarios in parallel, that can be changed to adapt to new user requests and manual acquisitions or new ground stations scenarios. It incorporates a highly configurable and powerful tool, the Plan Edition Tool (PlanET) which provides an advanced graphical visualization of planned tasks, as well as an improved representation of the on-board resources and the detected conflicts.

The company has also been prime contractor for the Mission Performance Assessment system (S2MPA). This facility is composed of two software components, the Quality Control and Calibration (QCC) and the End-to-End System Performance Monitoring (E2ESPM).

The S2MPA-QCC is responsible for quality control and calibration/validation, generating the entire payload on-board and on-ground processing calibration parameters as well as raising alerts for Sentinel-2 products quality defects and mission anomalies. The S2MPA-E2ESPM monitors the Sentinel-2 system operations, analyzing the main business process contributing to the overall Sentinel 2 end-to-end system performance.

It is also relevant to mention the involvement in the Sentinel-2 Mission Performance Centre (MPC) in which Elecnor Deimos will provide one operator during mission commissioning and operational phases, providing expert support in the mission calibration, processing and system monitoring.

In the development of these systems Elecnor Deimos has incorporated elements from the gs4EO suite of products, already in used operationaly in their own mission DEIMOS-2. In total, more than 15 engineers have been working in the last years from Elecnor Deimos to help this mission becoming a reality.

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Space remains the ‘final frontier’ for our world and Beijing is exploring new ways to journey beyond Earth’s boundaries. Yet in addition to a spirit of adventure, jetting off into orbit has led to major advances for science and technology. Consequently, Chinese companies are boosting investments and R&D (Research & Development) support for the satellite technology industry.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is leading the space program in the country and has signed agreements with other countries to share technologies and information. In recent years, Beijing has made remarkable progress in the ‘space race.’ Currently, more than 130 China-made spacecraft and satellites are in orbit. CNSA recognizes that its team must rely on cooperation from abroad in order to flourish.

Belgium joins China for Earth Observation mission

Beijing and Brussels approved last week a MOU (memorandum of understanding) for joint collaboration on satellite technology that could place both nations “at the forefront” to deliver vital information worldwide, as revealed by Belgian State Secretary of Science Policy Elke Sleurs. The document was signed by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and CNSA to support space sciences, technologies and applications.

The key project would be the Earth Observation program, a satellite mission. Space agencies from both nations plan to design and build a satellite with the full capacity to deliver exclusive agriculture and environmental information to the rest of the world.

“We have been building on the scientific cooperation between Belgium and Chinese scientists over the past few years, especially in the fields of the application of Earth observation data for environmental monitoring,” Sleurs told Xinhua news agency. “The idea grew to also involve technological and industrial partners in the cooperation.”

New advances for a new space age

Through collaboration of rocket scientists from around the globe, China is making tremendous advances on space propulsion technology. CNSA hopes to launch a communications satellite that utilizes electric propulsion, according to the China Topix Website.

Wang Min, a satellite designer from the Chinese space academy, explained that using such technology can cut in half the energy requirements for a space launch, while reducing the costs of launching a satellite into space by 30 percent.

Meanwhile, there is even bigger news in regards to recent advancements in space technology. Wang Feixue, director of the Center for Satellite Navigation and Positioning Technology, has been leading China’s Beidou Satellite System, a team of 300 scientists, to enhance global satellite coverage by 2020.

“The Beidou global system will focus on upgrading precision and expanding its application in the Asia-Pacific region,” Wang told the China Daily. He described how Beidou would be a much more advanced version of GPS (Global Positioning System), which can pinpoint an object on Earth from satellite imagery within 1.5 meters at a given point, instead of the current range of 10 meters.

Nigeria goes to orbit with China

Nigerian scientists are also pursuing opportunities to work with China to jumpstart its satellite communications technology development. Abimbola Alale, managing director of the Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSat), and China’s ambassador to Nigeria Gu Xiaojie have pledged further support for bilateral scientific collaboration.

Space technology experts from China’s Great Wall Corporation will be assigned to work inside Nig ComSat facilities in Abija, as reported by AllAfrica news Website. The NigComSat is scheduled to be the first satellite station to be launched by China in the African continent.

Global values bridging China’s space dreams

Beijing is poised to stand “at the forefront” as a world leader for the future of satellite communications technology, but Chinese scientists cannot achieve success alone. They need the assistance of scientists from all over the globe. Accordingly, CNSA is taking a proactive approach by signing cooperation agreements with space agencies from other countries. Such collaboration would provide a more innovative attitude as the Chinese Dream is skyrocketing into space.

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UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) (“UrtheCast” or the “Company”) announced today that it has closed its previously announced prospectus offering (the “Offering”) of 24,868,750 subscription receipts of the Company (“Subscription Receipts”), raising aggregate gross proceeds of $99,475,000. The Subscription Receipts were offered on a “bought deal” basis at a price of $4.00 per Subscription Receipt.

The Offering was conducted by a syndicate of underwriters led by Raymond James Ltd. and including Canaccord Genuity Corp., Clarus Securities Inc., Cormark Securities Inc. and Dundee Securities Ltd. (collectively, the “Underwriters”). The Offering included the exercise in full of the over-allotment option granted to the Underwriters.

The net proceeds from the Offering will be used by UrtheCast to fund, in part, the purchase price of the previously announced acquisition of Elecnor, S.A.‘s Earth Observation business (the “Acquisition”), which, subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions, is expected to close on or before August 21, 2015. Further details concerning the Subscription Receipts and the Acquisition are set out in the Company’s press releases dated June 22, 2015 and entitled “UrtheCast Corp. to Raise $100 Million of New Capital in Conjunction with Acquisition of the Earth Observation Business of Elecnor, S.A.” and “UrtheCast To Acquire the Deimos Imaging Earth Observation Business from Elecnor, S.A.”, respectively, the investor presentation dated June 22, 2015 and the prospectus supplement dated June 24, 2015, each of which is filed on UrtheCast’s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

The Subscription Receipts are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “UR.R”.

This press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The Subscription Receipts and the Common Shares issuable upon exchange thereof have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act and such securities may not be offered or sold within the United States absent U.S. registration or an applicable exemption from U.S. registration requirements.

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