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NASA will send a remotely piloted research aircraft over the tropical Pacific Ocean to study how a warming climate is changing Earth.

The project called Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX) will perform a series of measurement campaigns using the long-range NASA Global Hawk (GH) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to directly address these problems.

Despite its low concentration, stratospheric water vapor has large impacts on the earth’s energy budget and climate. Recent studies suggest that even small changes in stratospheric humidity may have climate impacts that are significant compared to those of decadal increases in greenhouse gases. Future changes in stratospheric humidity and ozone concentration in response to changing climate are significant climate feedbacks.

While the tropospheric water vapor climate feedback is well represented in global models, predictions of future changes in stratospheric humidity are highly uncertain because of gaps in our understanding of physical processes occurring in the Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL, ~13-18 km), the region of the atmosphere that controls the composition of the stratosphere. Uncertainties in the TTL chemical composition also limit our ability to predict future changes in stratospheric ozone.

Source UAS

Waste management, improving air quality in the city, urban planning are hot issues for all local and regional authorities.

The Copernicus4Regions briefing that will take place in Brussels on 22 January 2013 is aiming to showcase how these matters can be efficiently tackled by space applications.

This briefing follows a first briefing that took place on 7 November 2011. The briefing is organised by ERRIN, the European Regions Research and Innovation Network.

More information and registration facility available here

Source Copernicus website

A new study uses the CMIP5 historical simulations to find out more about Arctic sea ice decline and ice export.

The Arctic sea ice is shrinking, both in extent and thickness. In addition to the manmade contribution to the sea ice loss, there are also natural factors contributing to this loss. A new study uses historical simulations to find out more about Arctic sea ice decline and ice export through the large gateway between Greenland and Svalbard – the Fram Strait.

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(Source Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research) and Copernicus.eu

On Friday, January 11, commercial operations of SPOT 4 satellite were terminated. The joint decision on stopping commercial operations of the satellite was made by the SPOT 4 owner – CNES (French Space Agency) and the satellite Operator – Astrium GEO-Information Services. The satellite has been operating for almost 15 years (177 months) from its launch in March 1998. Over 6.8 mln images of the Earth have been acquired since then.

Nonetheless, SPOT space program keeps developing. ScanEx Research & Development Center carries on direct reception and processing of SPOT 5 satellite data (announced lifetime is until 2015). In addition, commercial operation of the new SPOT 6 satellite will start soon – its data was for the first time in Russia received and processed by ScanEx’s specialists on October 17, 2012 using “UniScan” ground station at the Moscow remote sensing center. Now UniScan ground stations can be supplied to the interested organizations for SPOT 6 data reception (and similar SPOT 7 satellite, which is to be launched in the first half of 2014), whereas the already installed stations can be upgraded. SPOT 6/7 data processing software has been developed by ScanEx RDC within the frames of the international cooperation with Astrium GEO-Information Services company.

ScanEx company has exclusive rights to receive and distribute SPOT series satellites’ data on the territory of Russia and Belarus.

Besides SPOT program Astrium GEO-Information Services is the worldwide commercial Operator of the very high resolution satellites Pleiades-1A and Pleiades-1B (the last one was successfully launched on December 2, 2012). In compliance with the signed distributor agreement with Astrium GEO-Information Services, ScanEx RDC started to accept orders for data from these satellites. ScanEx also is ready to review orders to set up data reception from Pleiades-1A and Pleiades-1B satellites to UniScan stations, as provided by the agreement with Astrium GEO-Information Services.

Source ScanEX

Göktürk-2 is Turkey’s first national high-resolution optical observation satellite and was produced by TÜBİTAK and the Turkish Aerospace Industry Corp.


Turkish Science, Industry and Technology Minister Nihat Ergün told members of the press on Tuesday that the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) started receiving clear images from Turkey’s first domestically made high-resolution observation satellite, Gokturk-2, few days ago.

Ergün said the first images were from Turkey’s Antalya province and New Zealand’s Auckland region.

He said the satellite had been passing over Turkey four times a day and during those passages images could be obtained from every part of the country. The images would be used mostly by Turkish Air Force Command, Ergün added.

Göktürk-2 is Turkey’s first national high-resolution optical observation satellite and was produced by TÜBİTAK and the Turkish Aerospace Industry Corp. (TUSAŞ). According to a written statement from TÜBİTAK, the satellite will operate from approximately 686 kilometers above the Earth. The first images from the satellite should be received between Dec. 25 and 30.

After Göktürk-2 was launched into space from China in December 2012, a TÜBİTAK official stated that Turkey will complete its own satellite launching station in the next 10 years.

Turkey is among 25 satellite manufacturing countries and TÜBİTAK is working cooperatively with several other government institutions to construct the domestic satellite launching station.

Source and images at SatelliteToday and WorldBulletin

VietNamNet Bridge – The Space Technology Institute will send an Earth observation satellite worth 55.2 million euros (US$72.4 million) to the Earth’s orbit.

This will be the third satellite invested in by Vietnam, after Vinasat-1 and Vinasat-2. While the previous two versions mainly serve telecom business and capacity leasing, the third will be launched for scientific research.

Bui Trong Tuyen, vice president of the Space Technology Institute, informed the Earth observation satellite will be named VNREDSat-1A, and is scheduled for launch in April or early in the second quarter, depending on its progress and weather conditions,

French satellite manufacturer Astrium Satellites has been chosen as the general contractor. Besides, the institute intends to use the satellite launch service of Arianespace, which successfully sent Vinasat-1 and Vinasat-2 into space.

“The institute is following the necessary procedures for approval of the Prime Minister on this satellite launch plan. If approved, the plan will soon be implemented,” said Tuyen.

Astrium Satellites will supply a 120-kilo satellite equipped with information receiving and satellite control devices. In addition, the firm will provide training for 15 Vietnamese engineers at its satellite production facility in Toulouse, France.

After going into space, the satellite will operate in a Sun-synchronous orbit, at the height of 670 kilometers from the Earth. It will pass many latitudes at the same time, observing the changes over time of a certain point on the Earth based on the changes of light when it circles the Earth.

Tuyen said the Prime Minister had assigned his institute to develop a project for a natural resource, environment and disaster observation satellite funded by official development assistance (ODA) of France.

Source: SGT
and Vietnam.net

Recently the Danish company GRAS successfully completed a project for the Forestry Administration in Cambodia on “Satellite remote sensing in support of UN-REDD”.

Implementation of policies to “Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD) requires effective deforestation monitoring systems to estimate the size and changes in carbon pools at national and sub-national levels. Since 2006, GRAS has provided capacity development support and quality assurance of forest cover mapping to the GIS/Remote Sensing unit of the Forestry Administration (FA) in Cambodia, which is also the country focal point to UN-REDD. As a result, the GIS/RS unit is now a well-functioning department producing national forest cover maps from a range of different satellite types and also local maps supporting forest demarcation, community forestry, evaluation of the function of the forest and forest management plans at local level.

GRAS provided UN-REDD training courses in 2011 and 2012 which included theoretical introductions but mainly focused on hands-on sessions targeting both senior technical staff members as well as junior staff with very different levels of knowledge in terms of GIS and Remote Sensing. By finalizing the training, the FA staff members are now conscious about challenges in implementing UN-REDD projects but most of all updated about different approaches to calculating carbon stocks and changes with tabular as well as spatial data. They can evaluate historical land cover trends and identify the drivers of the changes finally used for modelling future scenarios and finally make the calculation of the estimated greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions that would result from the implementation of a REDD project. This capacity development was made possible with funding from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).


Staff of the GIS and Remote Sensing unit of the Forestry Administration, Cambodia, attending the GRAS training in “Satellite remote sensing in support of UN-REDD”.

Source GRAS

GISAT succesfully completed the UrbanAtlas+ project

End of the year GISAT, has successfuly completeted 3 years project called UrbanAtlas+, supported by ESA. The UrbanAtlas+ project has explored the potential of the recent GMES Urban Atlas service in support spatial planning tasks at local and regional level. At the the same time it has explored also how the recent technological advances in data presentation and exploration can support turning the data into standard information products. For better understanding of urban land cover and land use changes and related processes, the interactive WebTool based demonstrators has been developed, for both monitoring over time and integrating socio-economic data.


Flexible urban structure data exploration at detailed level (source: Gisat)

The aim of the project was therefore not only to make local and regional users aware of such new data sources, but also to explore to which extent and under which conditions Urban Atlas land monitoring service implemented under GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), primarily for the information support at the Europen level, can also serve the much larger community of spatial planners at local and regional level. As more then 75% of European citizens already live in urban areas and sustainable urban growth management is one of the most challenging tasks Europe-wide, that would be an excellet justification we further evolvement of the GMES Urban Atlas service into multi-scale and multi-purposes harmonized monitoring tool for European urbanized areas.

The User organisations involved with the UrbanAtlas+ included:

  • City Development Authority Prague (URM / MHMP) as local/city level user
  • Regional Authority of the Pilsen Region (RAPR) as regional user
  • Regional Authority of the Moravian-Silesian Region (RAMSR) as regional user
  • Regional Authority of the South Moravia Region (RASMR) as regional user
  • Czech Environmental Information Agency (CENIA) as national user

Despite the scale limitation of European Urban Atlas service (comparing to detailed regional/local datasets), the UrbanAtlas+ project results showed clearly huge service potential to support strategic planning at regional and local level, especially on sub-urban city outskirts where despite of the dynamic development, limited information support is available today for urban planners being out of the city mapping responsibility. There is potential in monitoring of these areas to plan, implement and monitor appropriate policy measures related to city and population growth, city competitiveness and quality of life, especially if spatial data are integrated with related socio-economic data. Besides, comparison of city status and development between individual regions or cities within the Czech Republic or beyond was also highly appreciated as it is not currently possible due to general incomparability of regional/urban planning documentation. In this respect, the GMES Urban Atlas datasets can further support INSPIRE harmonisation activities at this level.


Comparison of integrated spatial and statistical data including scatterograms (source: Gisat)

On the other hand, the UrbanAtlas+ project also clearly showed that certain minimal contents is essential for utility of analytical power of the GMES Urban Atlas data and that some aspects of the GMES Urban Atlas implementation specification has to be enhanced in favour of its future use beyond the European institution level. Main issue identified during the UrbanAtlas+ projects has been communicated and as these issues don’t represent the major cost drivers, hopefully they can be resolved during upcoming Urban Atlas data update organised by DG Regio.

The UrbanAtlas+ demonstrators created using the web-based framework allows original Urban Atlas data, statistics, indicators and encapsulated functionalities to be provided in a easy way, which can be directly utilized in spatial planning procedures or further explored or modified by the users seeking for new applications potential. In fact, the web-based approach to the demonstrator developed demonstrates not only potential of EO based GMES data. but also potential of the new emerging technologies to present in the EO based information in a way, which can effectively support user-friendly exploration and analysis of large spatial datasets.


Flexible integrated zoning analysis e.g. situation in flooding and conservation zones (source: Gisat)

Despite some contradicting GMES development in last year, number of follow-ups has been achieved and further demonstrations were developed focused both on the GMES Urban Atlas / Urban Audit potential on European level as well as on potential of WebTool software framework in general including first commercial project currently provided for the World Bank client.

About UrbanAtlas+ project

The UrbanAtlas+ project has been supported by ESA under the Czech incentive scheme. Although serving primarily urban and regional planning user community in the Czech Republic, it reflects also national and European directives context, thereby results could support spatial planning authorities in general across Europe in their efforts to fulfil a broad range of monitoring and reporting obligations.

GISAT as the project leader has utilized its long term expertize in land cover / land use applications in spatial planning domain as well as in the GMES context.

Source GISAT

FLOREO and UrbanAtlas+ projects have been selected to demonstrate successful regional GMES applications.

NEREUS and ESA launched their joint publication “The Growing Use of GMES across Europe’s Regions” on 10 October 2012. It collects 67 case studies of 17 European countries showing how GMES applications are used across Europe’s regions.

Operational snow cover mapping service is run by Gisat to support hydrological flood forecasting provided by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. This service has been developed within the FLOREO project which was implemented by Gisat in cooperation with SPRINX and Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague within the ESA PECS programme.

Find the on-line or pdf version of this publication here

“Window on GMES” is another publication discovering what GMES can do for European regions and cities. The publication has been published by GMES4Regions, joint activity of DORIS_Net and GRAAL FP7 funded projects.

UrbanAtlas+ project has been selected among 12 successful GMES applications to be featured in the publication. UrbanAtlas+ was focused to explore and demonstrate the potential of ongoing UrbanAtlas service production for spatial planning applications, especially:

  • urban growth dynamics monitoring and assessment providing insight into the land consumption & formation processes involved,
  • socio-economic data integration supporting integration of Urban Atlas data with conventional statistics in general, testing the standard Urban Audit set of indicators in particular.

Find the pdf version of this publication here

More information at GISAT

The Minister responsible for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Honourable Minister Christian Paradis, has launched the next and final stage of Canada’s RADARSAT Constellation project.


“Our Government is ensuring we have the tools to assert our sovereignty, monitor and manage our resources, and keep watch over our vast territory and coastal areas,” said Minister Paradis. “The world-class RADARSAT Constellation Mission keeps Canada at the forefront of the design and operation of radar satellites.”

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission will provide complete coverage of Canada’s vast land mass, oceans and coastal approaches, at least once per day, and up to four times daily in the high Arctic. Data produced by the Constellation will support key Government of Canada priorities related to: the Northern Strategy, especially in the Arctic; Defence; Safety, Sovereignty and Security; the Environment; Natural Resources; and Agriculture.

“Canada has a hard-won reputation for expertise in a highly competitive global environment. Through strategic investments in R and D and space, our Government is fostering industrial innovation, promoting commercialization, creating high-quality jobs, and positioning our industry for continued growth in the global economy,” added Minister Paradis.

In Budget 2010, the Government of Canada allocated funds to complete the design and begin construction. The contract with MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) will lead to the completion of construction; the launch of the three satellites, planned for 2018; and the first year of operation of the mission.

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission project is led by the CSA and supported by its principal users: the Department of National Defence, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Public Safety Canada.

For more details about the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, click here

Source