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[Via Satellite 06-16-2015] BlackSky Global, a rising Seattle-based satellite imagery startup founded in 2013, plans to launch a constellation of 60 Earth observation satellites to enable revisit times of a few hours or less.

The company has already raised capital to fully fund its first six spacecraft, which are planned for launch in 2016 and will pave the way for the rest of the fleet.

The first two satellites, Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2, are in the process of final testing and checkout. They will precede the rest of the constellation as experimental satellites. After the first two satellites, BlackSky Global plans to launch the four additional funded satellites, which would start generating revenue by the end of 2016.

By 2019, BlackSky Global aims to have its full constellation in orbit, providing 1-meter resolution color imagery of the planet to a myriad of different customers. The satellites would be able to provide video as well at a speed of one frame per second, and the company is also planning to offer premium services. BlackSky Global has satellite imagery providers and data analytics companies as customers today, and uses a pay-per-picture business model for service from its satellites.

“BlackSky is really about providing satellite imagery as a service just like we’ve become accustomed to satellite communications as a service,” Peter Wegner, chief technology officer at BlackSky Global and former director of the U.S. Air Force Operationally Responsive Space Office, told Via Satellite. “There are a number of companies out there that lease satellite transponder time, and we are essentially doing the same thing — we are just capitalizing the constellation and we’ll lease out to our customers the telescopes on the systems.”

Wegner described BlackSky Global’s early satellite strategy as a balance between starting with enough satellites to validate the technology and making the best use of existing funding. The first two satellites are primarily for experiments, and though some customer have shown interest in doing studies with them, Wegner said they are not commercial imaging systems. Pathfinder 1 and Pathfinder 2 will influence the next four satellites, which will be commercial in application. Wegner said the company reached the number 60 for the size of the constellation because of the revisit time it would enable.

Each BlackSky Global satellite has a mass of 50 kilograms and is about the size of a mini-fridge. The company contracted a division of Spaceflight Industries known as Spaceflight Systems, which was formerly Andrews Space, to build the satellites. Similarly, Spaceflight Services is facilitating launches and Spaceflight Networks is one of the main third-party partners for ground stations.

BlackSky Global’s satellites are designed for a three-year mission life at a fairly low altitude of 450 kilometers. The spacecraft will include propulsion systems to reach this service life at such an orbit. Wegner said the satellites are designed with pre-planned obsolescence in mind, as the lifespan of each spacecraft offers enough time to provide services and then rapidly refresh with new technology.

“That’s really a sweet spot for us because we want to be able to upgrade this constellation over time with the latest technologies that are coming out of the electronics sector and with imaging updates to the system. That gives us a natural path. We can keep the satellite costs pretty low by using single-string redundancy in most of the systems,” explained Wegner.

The satellites also leverage atypical orbits compared to other Earth observation spacecraft.

“What we are doing is putting our satellites in orbits that are inclined at lower inclinations with the Earth between 40 and 55 degrees. At those orbits the satellite comes over a spot multiple times a day but never revisits at the same time. The benefit is that it gives you a number of passes; in some cases six passes a day,” he said.

BlackSky Global is targeting customers in markets such as agriculture, forestry, government, finance, energy and more. Wegner said other satellite imagery providers could also be potential customers that could purchase “pixel capacity” by leasing time on the company’s satellites. BlackSky is also creating a Web-scale software platform for customers to request, receive and interact with its satellite imagery online.

Wegner said BlackSky Global has put a considerable amount of thought into the number of satellites it needs, and that this number could rise based on the level of demand.

“We are base-lining 60 in all of the analysis that we are doing. At the end of the day the number could be significantly more than that. It’s really going to be based on the amount of demand that’s out there for satellite imagery as a service,” he said.

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(Munich, 11/06/15) The quality of satellite imagery is improving year by year, to the point where it is now possible to read signage and see line markings clearly. Not only has there been an improvement in visual resolution now satellites like WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 are delivering imagery in 8 spectral bands, more than the eye can see.

To take advantage of these developments European Space Imaging is offering the High-Res Urban Challenge as part of this year’s Copernicus Masters focused on European Large Urban zones. Participants could potentially win a valuable data package of satellite imagery worth 20,000 Euro.

This year’s Challenge is looking for innovators who want to use satellite imagery in their ground-breaking product or solution. To help creators test and prove their ideas a sample data package of almost cloud-free, 40 cm, 8-band, WorldView-2 imagery is available for registered participants.

By offering participants the opportunity to trial real data in their solutions we hope to assist the development of quality, functioning products in which an essential element is very high-resolution satellite imagery, “ says Michaela Neumann, Director Sales and Marketing at European Space Imaging. “We encourage all developers to put their hat into the ring with their solutions. Previous participants have been very happy with the outcomes.”

European Space Agency (ESA) supports the prize for the Copernicus Masters each year, which means that all participants have two chances to win. Each individual challenge winner automatically goes into the pre-selection to become the Copernicus Master for 2015.

The European Space Imaging High-Res Urban Challenge is open for applications until the 20th July this year.

For more info and to sign up for the challenge visit: http://eusi.copernicus-masters.com/

About European Space Imaging
European Space Imaging is the leading supplier of very high-resolution (VHR) satellite imagery across Europe and North Africa. They operate a multi-mission capable ground station, enabling optimised collection strategies, flexibility and real-time weather assessments. Since 2002 European Space Imaging has continued to provide imagery from the most advanced VHR satellites available and services to customers throughout their region.

(IGSNRR – Chinese Academy of China, Beijing, 3 June 2015) The Workshop on Ancient Chinese Maps and Exchange of Chinese-Western Cartographical Culture was held in Beijing on 3 June 2015 in the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Workshop was organised by the Commission of Cartography and GIS of the China Society of Surveying & Mapping and Geoinformation under the sponsorship and support of the Zhengzhou University of Information Engineering, the IGSNRR and the State key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System (LREIS).

Invited academicians, professors, scientists, researchers and graduate students coming from Research Institutes and Labs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, from Universities, the National Library of China and other Institutions, presented their research on the issue and participated in discussions for future work and cooperation. Academicians Gao Jun and Zhou Chenghu and Profs Qi Qingwen, Sun Qun, Liqiu Meng, Bai Hongye, Gong Yingyan, Lu Liangzhi, Liang Qizhang and Evangelos Livieratos, spoke about the long Chinese cartographic legacy and the echoing of Western cartographic heritage, focusing also on the case of Matteo Ricci’s Chinese World Map in the late 16th and early 17th cent.

After a laborious day, a closing round table discussion on the possibilities of Chinese – European cooperation on relevant issues was concentrated, among various alternatives, on the principles based upon and on the models followed in the European project initiative GRATICULE for transforming cartographic heritage ecosystems for the modelling and transmission of novel cultural assets in the networked digital world, the initiative represented in the Beijing Workshop by Profs Liqiu Meng (TUM – Technische Universität München), Evangelos Livieratos and Chrysoula Boutoura (AUTH – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) .

The International Cartographic Association was represented in the Beijing Workshop by the Chair of the ICA Commission on Digital Technologies in Cartographic Heritage (E. Livieratos), the Chair of the ICA Commission on Theoretical Cartography (Qingyun Du) and the Vice Chair of the ICA Commission on Atlases (Qingwen Qi)

NASA has released data showing how temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide may change through the year 2100 because of growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The dataset, which is available to the public, shows projected changes worldwide on a regional level in response to different scenarios of increasing carbon dioxide simulated by 21 climate models.

The high-resolution data, which can be viewed on a daily timescale at the scale of individual cities and towns, will help scientists and planners conduct climate risk assessments to better understand local and global effects of hazards, such as severe drought, floods, heat waves and losses in agriculture productivity.

NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist. “With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet.”

The new dataset is the latest product from the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), a big-data research platform within the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Center at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. In 2013, NEX released similar climate projection data for the continental United States that is being used to quantify climate risks to the nation’s agriculture, forests, rivers and cities.

“This is a fundamental dataset for climate research and assessment with a wide range of applications,” said Ramakrishna Nemani, NEX project scientist at Ames. “NASA continues to produce valuable community-based data products on the NEX platform to promote scientific collaboration, knowledge sharing, and research and development.”

This NASA dataset integrates actual measurements from around the world with data from climate simulations created by the international Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.

These climate simulations used the best physical models of the climate system available to provide forecasts of what the global climate might look like under two different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios: a “business as usual” scenario based on current trends and an “extreme case” with a significant increase in emissions.

The NASA climate projections provide a detailed view of future temperature and precipitation patterns around the world at a 15.5 mile (25 kilometer) resolution, covering the time period from 1950 to 2100. The 11-terabyte dataset provides daily estimates of maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation over the entire globe.

NEX is a collaboration and analytical platform that combines state-of-the-art supercomputing, Earth system modeling, workflow management and NASA remote-sensing data. Through NEX, users can explore and analyze large Earth science data sets, run and share modeling algorithms and workflows, collaborate on new or existing projects and exchange workflows and results within and among other science communities.

NEX data and analysis tools are available to the public through the OpenNEX project on Amazon Web Services. OpenNEX is a partnership between NASA and Amazon, Inc., to enhance public access to climate data, and support planning to increase climate resilience in the U.S. and internationally. OpenNEX is an extension of the NASA Earth Exchange in a public cloud-computing environment.

NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

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The Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation and Space Technology is pleased to announce a Call for Mission and Technology Preparation activities for the ESA Call for Proposals for Earth Explorer 9. The timescales of the ESA Call are not yet confirmed, but it may be released towards the end of 2015, with submissions due around mid-2016.

The total budget available for the CEOI-ST Call will be up to £2M, which is expected to fund around 6-8 projects. In addition, PV funds may be required from industrial bidders, depending on the GBER category of the activities. Projects are expected to complete in 6-12 months.

The CEOI-ST Call will be released towards the middle of June 2015, when full details will be available, with a closing date 6 weeks later (i.e. end July 2015). It is anticipated that proposal selection will be conducted during August/September 2015 with projects typically starting from September/October 2015.

Proposals are invited for projects to undertake either Mission Preparation and/or Technology Development activities. Successful proposals will need to present a strong science relevance case linked to the societal challenges identified in ESA EO science strategy.

The activities should be aimed at consolidating the mission teaming with close involvement of potential mission PI’s/Co-PI’s and also, where appropriate, aim to strengthen the technology readiness of relevant UK technologies.

For further information contact:
Mr Chris Brownsword, CEOI-ST Technical Director
QinetiQ, Farnborough
Tel: 01252 393918 (land line)
07825 762527 (mobile)
Email: cbrownsword@QinetiQ.com

The Call will be issued on behalf of the UK Space Agency by the CEOI-ST Partners (Airbus DS Ltd, QinetiQ Ltd, STFC/RAL Space and University of Leicester)

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MINSK, 1 June (BelTA) – Belarus and India intend to develop a joint program in the field of remote sensing of the Earth, BelTA learned from the press service of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB).


“The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is actively developing cooperation with partners from the Republic of India. Negotiations are underway with the Ministry of Science and Technology of India on the mechanism of initiating joint programs in the field of remote sensing of the Earth,” the NASB explained.

The press service reported that in 2015, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus are Indian partners are carrying out projects in the field of new materials and laser technologies to the tune of $510,000. Last year the partners implemented projects in new materials and agriculture totaling $290,000. Two contracts in these areas are expected to be signed soon.

“This year the Powder Metallurgy Institute of the State Scientific and Production Association of Powder Metallurgy and the DMRL Laboratory (based in Hyderabad) signed the contract “Making foamed metal from nickel superalloy and titanium alloy, the organization of a trial manufacturing site at DMRL.” Moreover, the Stepanov Institute of Physics is implementing a joint project funded by the Belarusian National Foundation for Fundamental Research. The project is called “Laser synthesis of composite nanostructure for targeted use in sensor elements,” the NASB informed.

There are now two framework agreements on cooperation in science and technology between Belarus and India: the agreement on scientific cooperation with the Department of Biotechnology of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of India (DBT) (2000) and the agreement of scientific cooperation with the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) (2003). In addition, there is the intergovernmental Belarusian-Indian commission on cooperation in the field of science and technology on the basis of the agreement on cooperation in science and technology between the governments of the two countries, whose main objective is to coordinate the Belarusian-Indian scientific and technical cooperation in priority areas.

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Through satellite-bases research, the Algerian Space Agency ASAL has found a positive vegetation recovering of the forest areas located in the Aïn Témouchent province after the damages caused by wildfires in 2014.

The forest fires of summer 2014 devastated around 180 hectares, with Beni Ghenam being the most affected region, as Algérie1 reported. The main cause of the fires was human negligent behaviour while visiting the forests.

The analysis and comparison of images compiled by the Alsat-2A satellite in August 2014 and March 2015 has shown a growing chlorophyll activity related to the increase of vegetation along the burned areas.

This result helps to better understand the process of forest recovery after wildfires by assessing the presence of green biomass.

ASAL also hosts UN-SPIDER’s Regional Support Office in Algeria.

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(29 May 2015) The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a collaborative relationship between the photogrammetry and remote sensing communities with the open source geospatial community. The ISPRS is a non-governmental organisation devoted to the development of photogrammetry and remote sensing through international cooperation. OSGeo is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to support and promote the collaborative development of open source geospatial technologies and data.

The goal of this agreement is to promote the distribution and use of open geo-data sets in all communities, promote the development of related photogrammetry and remote sensing open source software, and to organise joint international workshops on global geo-information sharing through the use of open geo-data sets and open source geospatial software. It also aims to work closely with the “Geo for All” initiative, to help promote openness in education and research. Prof. Chen Jun, president of the ISPRS, is also an advisory board member of the “Geo for All” initiative, which aims to make geospatial education, software, and opportunities accessible to all.

Prof. Jun said that society has a long tradition in open data and open software in photogrammetry and remote sensing. According to Jun, one of the most recent changes in the field is the open access of GlobalLand30 dataset which was recently donated to the United Nations. With this MoU signed, ISPRS is looking to move forward in this field with an advantageous collaboration with OSGeo and ICA.

Commenting on the MoU, Jeff McKenna, president of OSGeo, said that remote sensing data is a huge part of OSGeo’s projects and that the agreement will allow the open geospatial community to work closely with the ISPRS community to discover and share these geodata sets. The hope is also that specific open software for the photogrammetry and remote sensing community can be expanded and developed with the help of the OSGeo community members.

Contact Anne Ghisla, OSGeo, a.ghisla@gmail.com

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The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image which detected dozens of fires burning in southwestern Africa on May 21, 2015.

The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants.

While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality. Each hot spot, which appears as a red mark, is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire. The smoke released by any type of fire (forest, brush, crop, structure, tires, waste or wood burning) is a mixture of particles and chemicals produced by incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials. All smoke contains carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter or soot.

This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on May 21, 2015. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption: NASA/Goddard, Lynn Jenner

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The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) has unveiled its high-resolution SPOT 6 and 7 National Mosaics and ortho-bundle data.

With a resolution of 1,5m, the SPOT 6 and 7 earth observation satellites, form a small constellation, which were deployed into the same orbit on 9 September 2012 (SPOT 6) and 20 June 2014 (SPOT 7). The two satellites replace a single satellite, SPOT 5, which was decommissioned at the end of March 2015.

“We are very excited to harness the potential benefits of the SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 satellite imagery products to further address national issues, including tackling food security, agricultural issues, energy, rural development and urban
planning, especially at local government level,” says SANSA CEO, Dr Sandile Malinga.

“SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 are crucial decision-supporting tools for South Africa,” he adds. “The Defence, Intelligence and Police departments will benefit greatly from their highly responsive sensors that increase acquisition capacity and simplify data access.”

SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 cover wide areas in record time and their agility capability makes them useful for disaster monitoring. Both products can accommodate last-minute urgent task requests with high levels of data detail.

“Using satellite data provides repetitive, reliable and consistent information about the planet on a global scale. When combined with ‘in-situ’ observations, it’s an extremely powerful tool for monitoring our environment, including low-cost housing mapping, which helps government with future planning and development. More importantly, with the two satellite we are in a position to provide two seasonal mosaics per year,” says SANSA Earth Observation MD, Dr Jane Olwoch.

SPOT 6 will aid agriculture by making available information about vegetation and providing water quality analysis. Among other wide-ranging data, these products are strategically in line with the SANSA goal to collect, assimilate and disseminate earth observation data to support South Africa’s policy making, decision making, economic growth and sustainable development initiatives.

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