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Sri Lanka was in the process of designing, developing and launching of its own small earth observation satellite and the project would commence once the funds were allocated, Science and Technology Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said.

Minister ranawaka expressed these views while addressing a seminar for representatives of ‘Countries that Forecast and Study Drought through Space Technology’ at Mount Lavinia Hotel today.

“Space technology, indeed, is one of those strategic technologies.There are several important initiatives pertaining to development of space technologies and their applications that have been planned to be implemented to during the next few years, with some of the activities already in progress,” Minister Ranawaka said.

Minister Ranawaka said the project proposal developed by the Arthur C Clarke institute for modern technologies for this purpose had already been submitted to the Government, and the project activities would commence as soon as the fund allocations were finalized.

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(3 July 2014) Deimos-2, Spain’s first ultra-high resolution satellite launched into orbit on 19 June, has started capturing its first images just 12 hours after it was brought on line.

Deimos-2, which was launched from the launch site at Yasny (Russia), was developed by Elecnor Deimos in a record time of just three years. The company built an innovative Satellite Integration and Operations Centre in Puertollano (Spain) to assemble and subsequently control Deimos-2. As a result, this project completes Elecnor Deimos’ presence in the entire value chain for space missions. Elecnor Deimos has the capability to manage entire space programs: design, integrate, validate, launch and operate Earth observation satellites; use them for commercial purposes and develop them for third parties.

The first images taken by the satellite are of San Francisco (USA) and of Qatar’s capital city, Doha, showing its avenues and the development that will be built there for the 2022 World Cup. Link

Over the next seven years, Deimos-2 will take shots down to a resolution of 75 cm, and is capable of capturing images of 150,000 Km2/day in the RGB; NIR and panchromatic bands. Images will be taken at the request of customers for use in agriculture, the environment, climate change, crisis control and emergencies, fires and floods, civil protection, defence, intelligence and border control.

About Elecnor Deimos

Elecnor Deimos is Elecnor’s technological area that specialises in engineering solutions in the aerospace, information systems and telecommunications sectors. The company is structured into four business units: Remote Sensing (responsible for operating the Deimos-1 satellite); Aerospace, Defence & Systems; Aeronautics; and Satellite Systems (managing the Puertollano Satellite Integration and Operations Centre and the Deimos-2 project).

About Elecnor

Elecnor develops projects involving infrastructure, renewable energies and new technologies. It has 12,500 employees and operates in over 40 countries.

(source: Elecnor Deimos)

SPOT 6/SPOT 7 constellation in place now, designed for unparalleled high-resolution national coverage

Airbus Defence and Space has published the first images obtained from the SPOT 7 satellite, a mere three days after its launch on 30 June. Over the last few hours, the entire chain – from satellite programming and image acquisition to telemetry reception and processing – was successfully put into operation to deliver these first spectacular images. These images show highly diverse landscapes, revealing SPOT 7’s full potential in terms of natural resource and urban zone mapping and agri-environmental monitoring.

The SPOT 6/7 constellation is now in place and considerably improves the capabilities and performance offered by SPOT 5, which has been in operation since 2002 and which is scheduled to be decommissioned from commercial service during the first quarter of 2015. This new constellation offers a higher resolution, greater programming reactivity and a much higher volume of images acquired daily (in monoscopic or stereoscopic mode).

SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 mark the dawning of a new era for the SPOT family in forming a constellation of high-resolution Earth observation satellites phased at 180° in the same orbit. This means that each point on the globe can be revisited on a daily basis and wide areas covered in record time, all with an unparalleled level of precision. With both satellites in orbit, acquisition capacity will be boosted to six million square kilometres per day – an area ten times the size of France.

With the very-high-resolution twin satellites Pléiades 1A and 1B, SPOT 6 and now SPOT 7, Airbus Defence and Space’s optical satellite constellation will offer the company’s customers a high level of detail across wide areas, a highly reactive image programming service and unique surveillance and monitoring capabilities.

The first SPOT 7 images can be downloaded via FTP: ftp.astrium-geo.com/SPOT7
For more information on SPOT 7: www.geo-airbusds.com/

SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 19, 2014—Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) announced today that it is adding another new agronomic service to its Connected Farm™ solution. The PurePixel™ Precision Vegetation Health Solution provides specialized processing of multi-spectral images used for crop health analysis. Field images processed with PurePixel technology provide farmers and their trusted advisors with a visual representation of the selected field?s crop health or maturity level based on a color-coded index. Since PurePixel filters out non-crop artifacts such as soil, shadows, and surface wetness, it can be used on fields with newly emerged vegetation or fields with full crop canopy.

PurePixel produces a vegetation vigor index map, which is a calibrated representation of vegetation health that can be used to track crop growth and measure the magnitude of difference between areas. Because PurePixel maps use a calibrated index, users can compare multiple images of the same area and visually detect changes in crop health over time. This feature is especially useful for monitoring expected progress in crop growth or improvements in crop health when treating underperforming areas within fields.

“With PurePixel’s more accurate and comprehensive vegetation health data, Trimble is providing farmers and their trusted advisors with another tool they can use to make better decisions,” said Levi Kettle, Connected Farm business area director of Trimble’s Agriculture Division. “The challenge with spatial data such as imagery is interpreting the results that lead to accurate and efficient decisions. By removing the ‘noise’ and delivering precisely geo-referenced field-ready maps, PurePixel enables trusted advisors to be more efficient in locating, identifying and solving crop production problems.”

“PurePixel imagery has been a critical part of my farm management and consulting for years,” said Steve Harrow, certified crop advisor for Trinity Ag Services. “With the solution I can cover thousands of acres and then go immediately to problem areas long before I would have detected them from walking fields. The imagery gives me an early warning system, so I can navigate to problem areas in my fields, diagnose the problem, and then write a prescription—all before we suffer economic losses.”

PurePixel allows users to:

  • Save time by quickly viewing large areas and identifying specific locations where issues may be present, enabling the farmer or trusted advisor to travel only to the targeted areas versus scouting the entire field
  • Make timely early-season decisions on newly emerged crop with PurePixel’s ability to significantly reduce image noise enabling critical decisions to be made prior to full crop canopy
  • Identify differences in crop health and maturity even when crop health is generally strong
  • Assess changes in canopy size and quality by analyzing multiple PurePixel maps from the same field within a season or over several seasons

PurePixel is an additional product Trimble has added to its newly launched agronomic suite of services. These services also include the Soil Information System™ (SIS) solution, a revolutionary soil analysis mapping technology. When PurePixel is used in conjunction with SIS, the savings can be significant. For example, a 200-acre vineyard saved 40 percent on inputs by leveraging both services leading to an annual savings of $300,000. In addition, the vineyard also was able to maximize its water use.

PurePixel images are accessed through the Connected Farm, which provides one central location for accessing key information impacting farm operations such as rainfall totals, weather forecasts, commodity tracking, planting coverage, yield mapping, fleet management, aerial imaging, and irrigation monitoring and control. With this information a farmer can make better decisions about his operation. For example, knowing daily rainfall totals can determine whether irrigation is needed, while wind speed data may be the deciding factor on whether to spray a given field or delay the activity. Comparing data from the Connected Farm Scout app or from aerial images against yield, soil, and field maps can aid in deciding the best seed variety and amount to plant in each portion of the field. To maximize fleet performance, Connected Farm’s fleet productivity reports can reveal a problem area where efficiency can be increased.

The PurePixel solution is currently available, and can be purchased using the Connected Farm Web site at: https://field.connectedfarm.com. For more information on PurePixel, visit: www.trimble.com/agriculture/purepixel.

About Trimble’s Agriculture Division

Trimble Agriculture solutions enable customers to maximize efficiency and reduce chemical and fertilizer inputs while also protecting natural resources and the environment. Trimble’s precision agriculture solutions cover all seasons, crops, terrains, and farm sizes, and its brand-agnostic strategy allows farmers to use Trimble products on most vehicles in their fleet—regardless of manufacturer. To enable better decision making, Trimble offers the Connected Farm solution which allows farmers to collect, share, and manage information across their farm in real time. To optimize water use, Trimble provides water solutions for irrigation, drainage, and land leveling. Trimble’s product suite includes vehicle and implement guidance and steering, as well as a portfolio of correction options that are the most versatile of their kind in the industry. Additional solutions include an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for aerial imaging and mapping; application control for seed, liquid, and granular products; a harvest solution; and farm management software.

For more information on Trimble Agriculture, visit: www.trimble.com/agriculture.

About Trimble

Trimble applies technology to make field and mobile workers in businesses and government significantly more productive. Solutions are focused on applications requiring position or location—including surveying, construction, agriculture, fleet and asset management, public safety and mapping. In addition to utilizing positioning technologies, such as GPS, lasers and optics, Trimble solutions may include software content specific to the needs of the user. Wireless technologies are utilized to deliver the solution to the user and to ensure a tight coupling of the field and the back office. Founded in 1978, Trimble is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Media Contact: LeaAnn McNabb of Trimble: 408-481-7808

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Interview co-founder Ching-Yu Hu


Skybox aims to deploy a fleet of satellites that will be able to map any place in the world, five to seven times a day.

When Ching-Yu Hu says she’s the only “nonrocket scientist” among her company’s four co-founders, it’s tempting to think she’s speaking metaphorically. But before starting Skybox, her co-founders were working on the Google X prize for the moon rover. They are literally rocket scientists.

The three—Dan Berkenstock, Julian Mann, and John Fenwick—were also classmates of Hu’s in a 2008 Stanford entrepreneurship class. As part of the class, students had to do the groundwork to form a venture-backed company. Hu says she “literally went up to them and said, ‘Hi; I’m going to be part of your team…’ They were clearly the three smartest people in the room, and I didn’t want to spend my last days at Stanford working on some silly project.”

Hu had studied statistics at University of California, Berkeley, and was getting her master’s in engineering at Stanford. Before meeting her co-founders, she thought she’d go work on Wall Street. Now, she’s handled functions including finance and marketing for a company whose mission is to provide timely high-resolution images of any location in the world using its own fleet of custom-designed satellites.

“We’re on a path to launch 24 satellites that will let us see any spot on Earth five times a day,” she says. If all goes well, that will happen in about five years. The company is also building a data platform to let it analyze the information coming back from those pictures and integrate it with data from other sources, public and private. If you think that sounds like the kind of data set Google would lust after, you’re absolutely right: Skybox agreed to be acquired by the search giant in June for $500 million.

Given the amount of activity in Skybox’s industry, the data platform could well turn out to be Skybox’s not-so-secret sauce. Urthecast, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based startup, recently released images taken by its cameras, which are bolted to the outside of the International Space Station. Planet Labs is tossing up dozens of supercheap, supersmall satellites, but their resolution will be 3 to 5 meters per pixel, compared with Skybox’s 90 centimeters per pixel.

Hu’s team started fundraising for Skybox in January 2009. Its pitch detailed its vision for businesses if timely, high-resolution imagery were easier to come by (currently, the U.S. government buys up most of the time available on suitable satellites). Port monitoring, for example, could be transformed. Predictions of crop yields could become much more accurate. Insurance companies and aid organizations could get vastly better, faster information about the effects of natural disasters.

The team nabbed $3 million from Khosla Ventures and has since raised $91 million. Skybox has grown to 130 employees. Its customers can order individual images just before a satellite flies over an area of interest, or they can subscribe to a stream of images, data, analytics, or some combination of the three. Hu says the company has customers and revenue but won’t divulge details.

The company designs its own satellites and cameras, then partners with others to build and launch them. Most comparable satellites are about the size of a school bus, with large telescopes and redundant systems. Skybox’s are about the size of a mini fridge. “Most of the innovation at Skybox has been about getting a high-performance optic into a small package,” says Hu. “The cost of deploying a satellite is directly related to its size and mass.”

In turn, Skybox hopes it’ll be able to keep costs low enough to appeal both to corporate customers and nongovernmental organizations. Those childhood dreams of having your very own spy satellite are ever closer to coming true.

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(25 June 2014) Every time you buy seafood at a restaurant, store, or waterfront dock there is a 1-in-5 chance that the fish was caught outside the law.

Illegal and unreported fishing worldwide accounts for up to 26 million metric tons of fish annually, worth up to $23.5 billion. That equates to more than 1,800 pounds of wild-caught fish stolen from our seas every second.

To help end this major global threat to the viability of our oceans, the UK-based Satellite Applications Catapult is today announcing its partnership with the non-governmental organisation Pew Charitable Trusts and satellite data services company exactEarth Europe to capture and analyse satellite shipping data, and combine it with more vessel information to detect, track and prosecute illegal fishers.

At the core of this effort will be a powerful, nimble programme that will routinely gather information from satellite sources and merge it with data from coastguards and local fishermen around the world to pinpoint the location of suspect vessels. This will enable coastguard officers, port officials, and fisheries managers and law enforcers to access current, accurate intelligence on vessel location and routes, allocated catch, licences, history of fishing activity and more.

Stuart Martin, CEO of the Satellite Applications Catapult, said, “This ground breaking partnership will support the Global Ocean Commission (GOC) Mission Ocean initiative, launched today, to save and restore ocean health. This new partnership will give the people charged with protecting the world’s fisheries a front-row view of what is actually happening on the water. Currently, illegal fishers can always find a place to hide on the vast oceans. Our work will shine a spotlight on those criminals and their activities, and help bring them to justice.”

Tony Long, director of Pew’s Ending Illegal Fishing Project, said, “Combining satellite technology with maritime expertise to combat illegal fishing makes sense economically, environmentally and socially. Criminal fishing operations use a wide range of ruses to steal fish from the commons, victimising everyone who relies on the oceans for food and a livelihood. This project closes the net around illegal fishing.”

The project to fight illegal fishing emerged from one of the Catapult spark workshops, which invite experts from diverse fields to develop innovative, effective solutions to major problems using satellite-derived data.

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The JRC has published the 2014 report of the public consultation, made last december-february, which has collected and analysed answers and feedback from over 700 representatives of private companies, citizens and European organizations, about the state of the art of INSPIRE Directive implementation in Europe.

The report is a comprehensive picture describing delays, obstacles and complexity, but on the other side of concrete results and benefits obtained, and, mainly, of the concordant belief that INSPIRE is a necessary and up-to-date initiative, whose benefits are already clear, and that the Directive represent a great opportunity all European citizens.

To download the report click here

See more at

(May 2014) OHB AG will be pooling the skills and capacities of its subsidiaries OHB System AG and Erwin Kayser-Threde GmbH with the aim of additionally strengthening OHB as a leading German space technology group in the European market.

OHB System AG (Bremen) and Erwin Kayser-Threde GmbH (Munich) already work jointly on major projects such as the MTG weather satellites and the EnMAP environmental satellite. There is already a structured allocation of tasks reflecting the two companies’ individual strengths.

The possibility of merging the two companies is currently being explored in detail in order to additionally strengthen the joint activities and to address future challenges in operating activities more effectively. These preparations are to be completed by the end of August 2014.

The merger will result in a system company for satellites and payloads in Germany capable of assuming a new role in the European market on account of its scale. OHB customers in particular will benefit from the heightened efficiency and competitiveness. The transaction will be a merger of equals with key management functions and sustained recruitment and personnel development activities based at both sites.

One aspect of the realignment of OHB’s German satellite and payload business entails the combination of Erwin Kayser-Threde GmbH’s two present facilities in Munich in new premises tailored to future requirements. For this reason, a new building is currently being constructed in the direct vicinity of the DLR Space Center in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich. These new premises will accommodate technical facilities allowing OHB to assume responsibility for new and challenging projects. With a total budget of over EUR 30 million, the construction project has reached the shell phase and is scheduled for completion in mid 2015.

Contact for media representatives:
Martin Stade
Head of Corporate Communications
Phone: +49 421 – 2020-620
Fax: +49 421 – 2020-9898
e-mail: pr@ohb.de
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(2014-06-05) Metria just finalised a project on Earth Observation (EO) for Ecosystem valuation. In four different trials in Asia and South America EO data was used for mapping in three terrestrial and one marine trial.

The EO derived maps was used for Ecosystem services valuation using the GIS-tool INVEST. The project was funded by the European Space Agency and performed in co-operation with GeoVille GmbH, GeoVille Environmental Services and Argans Ltd. More information is found in the recent newsletter. One example from Lombok in Indonesia reveals the benefits using EO data

Water falling on land is filtered by vegetation, soil and to some extent bedrock. Purification of water is one of the most important and basic ecosystem services. Pure water is a prerequisite for human well-being as drinking water, source of irrigation and for healthy aquatic environments. The aquatic environments provide services such as recreation and populations of edible fish and other aquatic organisms. Clean water, in lakes ponds and rivers, is important for game populations. Clean water availability is one of the most important factors for primary production. Water filtration hence provides the base for a cascade of ecosystem services at landscape and global level.

EO derived data is important to estimate the ecosystem services delivered, serving as key information to support policies on nutrient retention. In order to assess the nutrient retention potential on Lombok the land cover classification, a digital elevation model and metrological data on rainfall and soil characteristics was used as input to the Invest water yield and nutrient retention model. The results are calculated per watershed.

The figure displays one of the outputs, a phosphorous (P) retention map, where green areas have low retention and orange areas a high. The retention is closely connected to the nutrient load on the land but to a large extent dependent on the vegetation close to the water courses. The results show how EO data can be used to monitor different scenarios in land use changes and its impact on phosphorous retentions.

Questions?
For more information contact Tobias Edman , tel +46 10 121 85 04.
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(June 2014) Flood mapping using SAR-imagery has been demonstrated previously, using various techniques. The recently launched European radar satellite Sentinel-1 has the ability of facilitating future operational flood mapping based on fully automated processing.

Kongsberg satellite Services (KSAT) has in cooperation with the partners Norwegian Computing Center (NR) and Norwegian Space Centre developed a prototype product for operational flood extent mapping based on automatic detection that has been demonstrated for the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE).


KSAT product processed by Norwegian Computing Center based on Radarsat (2014)-2 Data and Products © MacDONALD, DETTWILER AND ASSOCIATES LTD., – All Rights Reserved and RADARSAT is an official mark of the Canadian Space Agency (2014).
The image: Floods in Troms – Image by Radarsat-2 – June 07, 2014 05:19 UTC. Image: NR, KSAT, NRS, MDA.
Areas affected by flooding are colored in dark red

KSAT’s Project Manager Hans Eilif Larsen says that in the future there will be regular and frequent monitoring of Norway from radar satellites by Sentinel-1 and other SAR missions. Potentially flooded areas may be reported and monitored operationally, not only as demonstrations, already from next flooding season.
bq. We try to show that it is possible, says Larsen.

The use of radar satellite data provides the ability to cover larger areas than by aircrafts and UAVs as today, and also provides authorities and other stakeholders with an overview of flood affected areas even though it could be bad flying weather, which is often the case with flood events caused by heavy rain, says Larsen.

KSAT product processed by Norwegian Computing Center based on Radarsat-2 Data and Products © MacDONALD, DETTWILER AND ASSOCIATES LTD., – All Rights Reserved and RADARSAT is an official mark of the Canadian Space Agency (2014).
The image: Flood at Lake Øyeren. Image by Radarsat-2 – May 27 2014. Image: NR, KSAT, NRS, MDA.
Areas affected by flooding are colored in dark red.

The current flood warning system is based on models. These can only estimate how floods turn out. Larsen says that satellite monitoring will provide an instant observation, not a calculated estimate of how flood evolves.
The first example of how this can be applied was demonstrated through radar images of the flooding taking place in Norway recently.

This first demonstration shows how an operationalised service can be used in flood mapping, says senior adviser Dag Anders Moldestad at the Norwegian Space Centre.

Moldestad says that through the major European Earth Observation program Copernicus Norway will have frequent access to radar images when the satellite Sentinel-1 enters the operational phase at the end of the summer.

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