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The South African National Space Agency (Sansa) has increased its earth observation (EO) budget this year to R70-million. “This is a 13% increase on last year’s expenditure,” reports Sansa CEO Dr Sandile Malinga. “The biggest [part of this] spend goes to data acquisition – about R30-million, for imagery from [French EO satel-lite] Spot and [US EO satellite] Landsat and other global satellites and then to improve our systems and turnaround times, so as to improve our service to our customers.”

The agency is also investing in improving its catalogue access system. It holds data going back as far as 1972. “It’s a wealth of information,” he highlights. “We continually have to migrate this data from one medium to another. This data migration, or archive migration, involves significant expenditure.”

Another activity that Sansa is pursuing and which falls under EO is the creation of what is called base infor-mation. Base information pro-vides the foundation for the development of comparative indices allowing satellite data to be used to track changes in environments, whether natural or the result of human activity. For example, vegetation indices and urban development indices.
Recently, Sansa officially unveiled the Spot 5 National Mosaic 2012. This is a mosaic which covers the entire country and is composed of images taken by the Spot 5 satellite last year.

The 2012 edition is the seventh such mosaic of the country compiled from Spot imagery. “We want to ensure that we acquire the data we require as a country,” said Malinga at the launch of the mosaic.
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words – a satellite image has a wealth of information and is worth a million decisions.”
“The Spot mosaic represents a commitment that Sansa has made to provide quality data and services to a variety of users,” explained Sansa EO stakeholder and new business development manager Imraan Saloojee at the same function.“It is used for decision-making as well as to bring benefits to society.”
Sansa distributes the mosaic to national government departments and agencies, all nine provincial governments, and some State-owned com-panies. These recipients include the departments of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Communications, Defence, Environmental Affairs, and Home Affairs; the South African Police Service, the South African National Roads Agency, the South African National Parks, Statistics South Africa, and national electricity utility Eskom, among others.
“The economic value of this mosaic, this satellite data, is in its utility,” stated Department of Science and Technology space science and technology chief director Humbulani Mudau. “If this data is not utilised, for making informed public decisions, we will have missed a chance. _“Data in itself is of little value, unless it is used.”

It takes almost a full year to acquire all the images required to provide total coverage of the country. The first image for the cur-rent mosaic was taken on January 3, 2012, and the last on December 23. Each ‘tile’ in the mosaic covers an area of 60 km by 60 km. The new mosaic features several improvements over the 2011 edition, which suffered from some issues of colour balancing and gaps in the coverage. As a result, Sansa developed an improved method of colour balancing and a better true colour algorithm. And there are no gaps in the 2012 mosaic. Better Coverage

Sansa plans to provide even better coverage in future. “We are in the process of contracting for next-generation satellites Spot 6 and Spot 7, which will be much superior,” reported Malinga. “We have now contracted for Landsat 8.”

Sansa is composed of four divisions – Earth Observation, Space Operations, Space Science and Space Engineering.
Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu
Source

(Friday, 05 July 2013)EUMETSAT and the African Union have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation on Earth observation as well as the implementing arrangement for Monitoring of Environment and Security in Africa (MESA) project, funded by the European Development Fund (EDF).

Over the last 20 years, EUMETSAT has developed its cooperation with Africa on access and applications of its satellite data, in particular in major capacity building projects funded by the EDF, like PUMA (Preparation for the use of MSG in Africa) and AMESD (African Monitoring of the Environment for Sustainable Development). EUMETSAT has deployed about 400 low cost data receiving stations over the entire African continent, through which African users can access in real time the full EUMETSAT data stream and environmental information and forecasts from other partners.

The new Memorandum of Understanding on Earth observation establishes a political mechanism for ensuring that future cooperation will continue to benefit all African Union member states.

A first concrete realisation is the EUMETSAT contribution to the MESA capacity building project established between the African Union and the European Union and funded by the European Development Fund, as a follow-up to the PUMA and AMESD projects. Capitalising on previous investments, the project’s focus is to strengthen the capacity to use Earth observation data in Africa, with emphasis on climate and environment applications.

About EUMETSAT

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites is an intergovernmental organisation based in Darmstadt, Germany, currently with 27 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom) and four Cooperating States (Bulgaria, Iceland, Lithuania, and Serbia).

EUMETSAT operates the geostationary satellites Meteosat-8, -9 and -10 over Europe and Africa, and Meteosat-7 over the Indian Ocean.

EUMETSAT also operates two Metop polar orbiting satellites as part of the Initial Joint Polar System (IJPS) shared with the US National Administration for Atmosphere and Ocean (NOAA). The Metop-B polar-orbiting meteorological satellite, launched on 17 September 2012, became prime operational satellite on 24 April 2013. It replaced Metop-A, the first European polar-orbiting meteorological satellite, which was launched in October 2006. Metop-A will continue operations as long as its available capacities bring benefits to users.

The Jason-2 ocean altimetry satellite, launched on 20 June 2008 and exploited jointly with NOAA, NASA and CNES, added monitoring of sea state, ocean currents and sea level change to the EUMETSAT product portfolio.

The data and products from EUMETSAT’s satellites are vital to weather forecasting and make a significant contribution to the monitoring of environment and the global climate.

Media Relations EUMETSAT
Tel: +49 6151 807 7320
Fax: +49 6151 807 7321
Email: press@eumetsat.int

(4 July 2013) Europe’s ambitious global environmental monitoring programme will now be able to move into operation thanks to the European Parliament’s approval of the multiannual financial framework budget for 2014–20.

Marking a significant political milestone, the multiannual financial framework (MMF) includes the provision of €3786 million (at 2011 economic conditions) for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme, currently being renamed Copernicus.

The approval follows difficult negotiations and the subsequent agreement reached last week at the European Council.

Copernicus is set to make a step change in the way we care for the planet by providing reliable, timely and accurate services to manage the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and help respond to crises.

The success of the programme relies on the provision of robust data, predominately from Earth observation satellites.

ESA is developing the series of Sentinel satellites for this purpose, but also draws on data from other space agencies that are contributing to the programme. In essence, ESA is responsible for the ‘space component’.

The first three Sentinels are expected to be launched within the next 12 months.

Parliament’s approval of the MMF means that the programme can move forward over the next seven years, safeguarding considerable investments already made by ESA and EU Member States.

The legislative framework will be defined by a dedicated Copernicus regulation, a draft of which was proposed by the European Commission on 29 May. The legalities are currently being ironed out by the European Parliament and the European Council.

Coordinating the evolution of the Copernicus Space Component, ESA has prepared a long-term plan for the content and associated funding needs up to 2028.

The plan accounts for the procurement of recurrent Sentinel satellites and instruments, as well as access to data available from contributing missions. It also covers the operation of the Sentinel satellites until 2020.

This Copernicus Space Component Long Term Scenario was recently presented to ESA and EU Member States. It will now be updated to ensure full coherence with the Copernicus regulation once the decision process is finalised.

ESA Member States have already made significant investments in the space component through Ministerial Conferences in 2005, 2008 and 2012. With the MFF now secure, ESA’s Member States may be engaged again towards the end of the decade for the development of the next-generation Copernicus space component, which will be driven by political and service priorities expressed by the EU.

Josef Aschbacher, Head of ESA’s GMES Copernicus Space Office, said, “The approval of the Copernicus programme within the MFF is a major milestone, bearing in mind that in June 2011 it had been proposed to fund Copernicus outside the MFF.

“ESA is clearly very pleased that Copernicus is now within the MFF, albeit with a reduced budget.

“We have made a real effort to propose a solution that responds to Copernicus user priorities in terms of long-term continuity, frequency of observations and evolution of the system within the new level of funding.

“There remains much to be done, but we now look forward to taking the programme into operation.”

source ESA:http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/GMES/Green_light_for_GMES_CopernicusSpacenewsfeed

(June-SatelliteToday). After 11 and a half years tracking sea levels, NASA’s satellite Jason 1 has ended its useful life, the agency announced. The satellite was decommissioned this week after its last remaining transmitter failed.

Jason 1 was one of three oceanographic satellites that carried a radar altimeter and bounced radio pulses off the Earth, enabling sea surface height to be determined within a few centimeters. From the data, scientists have enhanced their models of ocean circulation and observed events such as El Nino, where large masses of warm water pool in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Communication with the satellite was lost on June 21 and efforts to re-establish it were unsuccessful. The satellite was ordered to turn off its attitude control systems on Monday. Jason 1 will turn away from the sun and its solar-powered batteries will drain over the next 90 days. The satellite will remain in orbit for at least 1,000 years before it falls back into Earth’s atmosphere.

More Info

(24 June 2013) Following severe flooding in northern India and Nepal, the Indian government activated the ‘International Charter Space and Major Disasters’ on 19 June 2013 at 10:30.

The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) tasked its radar satellite TerraSAR-X with acquiring images of the affected areas and made these available to the Indian civil protection authorities.

Situation is worse than first thought

“After activation of the Charter, we provide our satellite data as soon as possible, free of charge. We provide crisis relief from space for people in the affected regions,” says Jens Danzeglocke of the DLR Space Administration who, as Charter Secretary, coordinates the German contributions to this international federation of 15 space organisations.

“Our colleagues at the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (Zentrum für satellitengestützte Kriseninformation; ZKI) at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen led the re-commanding of the satellite immediately after the emergency call and delivered the data to the Charter’s Project Manager in India as soon as possible,” explains Danzeglocke.

In India, the situation is far worse than first thought. The heavy rains surprised the people in the disaster areas. So far, the floods are known to have killed more than 680 people and thousands are still missing; about ten thousand military personnel have been deployed. The biggest rescue operation in the history of the Indian military is underway. The effects are especially bad in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand, where the Ganges River and its tributaries have flooded. TerraSAR-X has imaged this region over the last few days.

The TerraSAR-X radar satellite has been orbiting Earth since 2007 at an altitude of just over 500 kilometres. It has the advantage of being able to acquire images through cloud cover at a very high resolution – better than 1.5 metres when using what is referred to as ‘spotlight’ mode. In the current case, DLR is providing satellite imagery. Indian experts then process these data and combine them with maps. This allows the support staff to see where villages have been destroyed by floodwaters or mountain valleys have been cut off from the outside world.

German participation in the Charter is made possible by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie; BMWi) and is jointly implemented by the DLR Space Administration and the DLR German Remote Sensing Data Center (Deutsches Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum; DFD), which is part of ZKI. DLR has been a member of the Charter since 2010 and took over the chairmanship of the international network in April 2013. In 2012, the Charter was activated 40 times and it has been activated 10 times so far this year.

(source: DLR)

(By Peter B. de Selding | Jul. 1, 2013, SpaceNews) PARIS — British small-satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), furthering its involvement in Kazakhstan’s nascent space program, on July 1 said it would provide an Earth observation satellite and satellite-platform technologies for future spacecraft following a contract with Ghalam LLP of Kazakhstan. Ghalam is a joint venture of Kazakhstan Garysh Sapary (KGS) and EADS Astrium of Europe, which owns SSTL.

The contract follows the October 2009 agreement between Astrium and the Kazakh government to embark on a broad satellite development effort whose long-term goal is to create an autonomous Kazakh satellite manufacturing capability.

The 2009 agreement, which was signed during a bilateral French-Kazakh summit and valued at 230 million euros ($336 million), calls for Astrium to provide a high-resolution Earth observation satellite to Kazakhstan, and for SSTL to provide a medium-resolution spacecraft. The SSTL and Astrium satellites being built under the 2009 agreement are scheduled for launches in 2014.

In March, the UK Space Agency concluded a memorandum of understanding under which Kazakh personnel would be trained by SSTL through exchanges with KGS. In its July 1 announcement, SSTL said 16 Kazakh engineers have worked in Britain under the previous agreement.

SSTL said the new satellite would include an SSTL-built EarthMapper payload for commercial Earth observation imagery in addition to other payload elements including an on-board computer. A smaller satellite, to carry an instrument for ionospheric research, will be developed by SSTL and Ghalam.

Source SpaceNews

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satellite today

(3 July 2013) The curtain has come down on a superstar of the satellite oceanography world that played the “Great Blue Way” of the world’s ocean for 11-1/2 years.
The successful joint NASA and Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite was decommissioned this week following the loss of its last remaining transmitter.

Launched Dec. 7, 2001, and designed to last three to five years, Jason-1 helped create a revolutionary 20-plus-year climate data record of global ocean surface topography that began in 1992 with the launch of the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon satellite. For more than 53,500 orbits of our planet, Jason-1 precisely mapped sea level, wind speed and wave height for more than 95 percent of Earth’s ice-free ocean every 10 days. The mission provided new insights into ocean circulation, tracked our rising seas and enabled more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts.

“Jason-1 has been a resounding scientific, technical and international success,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The mission met all of its requirements, performed an extended mission and demonstrated how a long-term climate data record should be established from successively launched satellites. Since launch, it has charted nearly 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) of rise in global sea levels, a critical measure of climate change and a direct result of global warming. The Jason satellite series provides the most accurate measure of this impact, which is felt all over the globe.”

During parts of its mission, Jason-1 flew in carefully coordinated orbits with both its predecessor Topex/Poseidon and its successor, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, launched in 2008. These coordinated orbit periods, which lasted about three years each, cross-calibrated the satellites, making possible a 20-plus-year unbroken climate record of sea level change. These coordination periods also doubled data coverage.

Combined with data from the European Space Agency’s Envisat mission, which also measured sea level from space, these data allow scientists to study smaller-scale ocean circulation phenomena, such as coastal tides, ocean eddies, currents and fronts. These small-scale features are thought to be responsible for transporting and mixing heat and other properties, such as nutrients and dissolved carbon dioxide, within the ocean.

“Jason-1 was an exemplary and multi-faceted altimeter mission and contributed so much to so many scientific disciplines,” said Jean-Yves Le Gall, CNES president in Paris. “Not only did Jason-1 extend the precise climate record established by Topex/Poseidon, it made invaluable observations for mesoscale ocean studies on its second, interleaved orbit. Even from its ‘graveyard’ orbit, Jason-1 continued to make unprecedented new observations of the Earth’s gravity field, with precise measurements right till the end.”

The in-orbit Jason-2 mission, operated by the meteorological agencies of the United States and Europe (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and EUMETSAT, respectively) in collaboration with NASA and CNES, is in good health and continues to collect science and operational data. This same U.S./European team is preparing to launch the next satellite in the series, Jason-3, in March 2015.

Contact was lost with the Jason-1 satellite on June 21 when it was out of visibility of ground stations. At the time of the last contact, Jason-1 and its instruments were healthy, with no indications of any alarms or anomalies. Subsequent attempts to re-establish spacecraft communications from U.S. and French ground stations were unsuccessful. Extensive engineering operations undertaken to recover downlink communications also were unsuccessful.

After consultation with the spacecraft and transmitter manufacturers, it was determined a non-recoverable failure with the last remaining transmitter on Jason-1 was the cause of the loss of contact. The spacecraft’s other transmitter experienced a permanent failure in September 2005. There now is no remaining capability to retrieve data from the Jason-1 spacecraft.

On July 1, mission controllers commanded Jason-1 into a safe hold state that reinitialized the satellite. After making several more unsuccessful attempts to locate a signal, mission managers at CNES and NASA decided to proceed with decommissioning Jason-1. The satellite was then commanded to turn off its magnetometer and reaction wheels. Without these attitude control systems, Jason-1 and its solar panels will slowly drift away from pointing at the sun and its batteries will discharge, leaving it totally inert within the next 90 days. The spacecraft will not reenter Earth’s atmosphere for at least 1,000 years.

“Like its predecessor Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1 provided one of the most comprehensive pictures of changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean, including the comings and goings of El Nino and La Nina events,” said Lee-Lueng Fu, Jason-1 project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “These Pacific Ocean climate cycles are responsible for major shifts in sea level, ocean temperatures and rainfall every two to five years and can sometimes be so large that worldwide weather patterns are affected. Jason-1 data have been instrumental in monitoring and predicting these ever-changing cycles.”

In the spring of 2012, based on concern over the limited redundancy of Jason-1’s aging control systems, NASA and CNES moved the satellite into its planned final “graveyard” orbit, depleted its extra fuel and reconfigured the mission to make observations that will improve our knowledge of Earth’s gravity field over the ocean, in addition to delivering its oceanographic data products.

The first full 406-day marine gravity mission was completed on June 17. The resulting data have already led to the discovery of numerous small seamounts, which are underwater mountains that rise above the deep-sea floor. The data also have significantly increased the resolution of Earth’s gravity field over the ocean, while increasing our knowledge of ocean bathymetry, which is the underwater depth of the ocean floor.

JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason-1 mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. CNES manages the French portion of the mission.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

(source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Physicists at the University of Leicester to map city’s air quality using plane-mounted spectrometer to track pollutant levels


Scientists at the University of Leicester are set to undertake a groundbreaking project to map air quality across the city, which will see flights across the city using planes fitted with pollution detecting technology.

An air quality measuring spectrometer, developed by the Leicester team will be used to produce “heatmap” style images of pollution levels in Leicester as part of the Airborne Air Quality Mapper (AAQM) project.

The device monitors visible light – and measures how much light is lost at specific wavelengths absorbed by NO2. Development of the instrument took place with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and was funded by the UK’s Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation and the Natural Environment Research Council.

Images show how levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) vary around the city – revealing the differences in air quality between green, wooded areas and busy road junctions and areas of industry.

Results

The results could help draw attention to polluted areas – and help inform future environmental planning decisions. The project is being supported by Leicester city council and Defra.

Project leader Dr Roland Leigh, of the Earth Observation Science group, said: “This is the first time in the UK anyone has been able to use airborne devices to map pollution levels across whole cities. This information really helps us understand the sources of pollution within cities, and the human exposure downwind.

“We are hoping to do carry out further flights as part of the Airborne Air Quality Mapper project – and are looking for potential collaborators and customers.”

The researchers hope to carry out further flights with industrial partners Bluesky International Ltd, a UK-based specialist in aerial imaging and remote sensing data collection and processing. They also hope to be able to adapt the technology to use on spacecraft to monitor pollution levels across the globe.

Dr James Lawrence, Research Associate in the Earth Observation Science Group, developed aspects of the AAQM instrument and flew with it during its test flight.

He said: “We have a world-first spectrometer which shows where the major emissions of nitrogen dioxide are occurring – typically in industrial or heavy traffic areas.

“It is important to note that the measurements do not necessarily relate to the pollution levels at ground level only – each reading takes into account the amount of NO2 at all altitudes between the ground and the plane.”

Source

(26 June 2013) The biomass of the northern hemisphere’s forests has been mapped with greater precision than ever before thanks to satellites, improving our understanding of the carbon cycle and our prediction of Earth’s future climate.

Accurately measuring forest biomass and how it varies are key elements for taking stock of forests and vegetation. Since forests assist in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, mapping forest biomass is also important for understanding the global carbon cycle.

In particular, northern forests – including forest soil – store a third more carbon stocks per hectare as tropical forests, making them one of the most significant carbon stores in the world.

The boreal forest ecosystem – exclusive to the northern hemisphere – spans Russia, northern Europe, Canada and Alaska, with interrelated habitats of forests, lakes, wetlands, rivers and tundra.

With processing software drawing in stacks of radar images from ESA’s Envisat satellite, scientists have created a map of the whole northern hemisphere’s forest biomass in higher resolution than ever before – each pixel represents 1 km on the ground.

“Single Envisat radar images taken at a wavelength of approximately 5 cm cannot provide the sensitivity needed to map the composition of forests with high density,” said Maurizio Santoro from Gamma Remote Sensing.

“Combining a large number of radar datasets, however, yields a greater sensitivity and gives a more accurate information on what’s below the forest canopy.”

About 70 000 Envisat radar images from October 2009 to February 2011 were fed into this new, ‘hyper-temporal’ approach to create the pan-boreal map for 2010.

This is the first radar-derived output on biomass for the whole northern zone using a single approach – and it is just one of the products from the Biomasar-II project.

Sponsored by ESA, the project also exploited Envisat archives to generate regional maps for 2005.

The future Sentinel-1 mission will ensure the continuity of this kind of radar data at large, but the dedicated Biomass satellite was recently selected to become ESA’s seventh Earth Explorer mission. The mission is set to provide an easier and more accurate way to monitor this precious resource regularly.

The Biomass satellite will complement the Biomasar results, especially for tropical regions.

“Even our new, hyper-temporal approach is not able to penetrate dense multistorey canopies of rainforests with Sentinel-1 or Envisat’s radars. Here, longer wavelengths are indeed needed,” says Prof. Christiane Schmullius from the University Jena, Biomasar coordinator.

The Biomass satellite will deliver, for the first time from space, radar measurements at a wavelength of around 70 cm to delve below the treetops. It will also monitor forest disturbance and regrowth.

(source: ESA)