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Russia’s first Earth remote sensing satellite, the Kondor, may be launched in January 2012, a space official said on Thursday.


“We are developing Kondor and Arkon [satellites],” deputy head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Anatoly Shilov said. “Arkon is a distant future, but Kondor will hopefully fly in January.”

The Kondor is an 800 kg Earth remote-sensing spacecraft designed to provide high-resolution radar imagery and terrain mapping in real-time. It will be launched as part of the so-called Arktika Earth observation satellite grouping.

“As a rule, 90% of the time the Arctic region is covered with clouds or remains in darkness due to long polar night season. In such conditions these satellites are indispensible,” Shilov said.

The official added that Russia was planning to launch in 2012 two Earth optical observation satellites – the Resurs-P and the Canopus-B – to provide precision monitoring of natural and man-made disasters, particularly wildfires and environmental pollution.

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Euroconsult is a leading global research and analyst firm specializing in the satellite sector. Its annual awards for Excellence in Satellite Management honor companies for outstanding achievement. Awards are presented each September in Paris at World Satellite Business Week. A jury of industry experts applies rigorous quantitative and qualitative standards to determine award winners.


“From all of us at DigitalGlobe, I’d like to extend our thanks to the committee and to Euroconsult for this honor,” said Jeffrey R. Tarr, President and CEO of DigitalGlobe. “Receiving this award sends a clear message that we are succeeding where it matters most — using our industry leading constellation of satellites and analytic capabilities to help our customers save time, save resources and save lives.”

“The Euroconsult awards recognize companies and their leaders who, through their vision, innovation, and performance have significantly impacted the industry in the past year,” said Pacome Revillon, CEO of Euroconsult. “The Earth Observation Operator of the Year Award bestowed onto DigitalGlobe celebrates the company’s strong overall performance in 2010, including significant revenue growth in fast growing market segments such as location-based services (LBS). Furthermore, the award recognizes strategic initiatives such as the roll-out of direct access partner contracts to international governments.”

About DigitalGlobe DigitalGlobe is a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery products and services. Sourced from our own advanced satellite constellation, our imagery solutions support a wide variety of uses within defense and intelligence, civil agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, Internet portals and navigation technology. With our collection sources and comprehensive ImageLibrary (containing more than one billion square kilometers of earth imagery and imagery products) we offer a range of on- and off-line products and services designed to enable customers to easily access and integrate our imagery into their business operations and applications. For more information, visit www.digitalglobe.com .

SOURCE: DigitalGlobe and marketwatch

Organic agriculture provides healthy food and protects the environment by practicing methods that avoid the widespread dissemination of chemicals. ESA is now helping to develop the use of satellite images for certifying crops as organic.

Products can be labeled ‘organic’ only if they are produced according to a set of standards, undergo an evaluation and pass a yearly inspection.

Since organic and conventional crops are treated differently, their characteristics are also different.

ESA has been working with Ecocert, an organic certification organization, to use satellite images to spot these differences and support the certification process.

Observation from space can be applied to wide areas on a regular basis. The concept was tested on winter wheat and corn grown in relatively large fields.

Five different satellites were used during the trials to develop the new approach: SPOT-4, Kompsat-2, Landsat-5, Proba and WorldView-2

Multi- and hyperspectral satellite imagery were used to derive several indicators based on biophysical justification and crop management practices to differentiate between conventional and organic methods.

Candidate indicators that were investigated include crop spectral reflectance, yield forecasts and spatial heterogeneity.

According to Dr Pierre Ott from Ecocert, the trial results were “over and beyond what could have been envisioned initially.”

Dr Ott said, “Accuracy rates of 80% to 100% in discriminating organic from conventional fields are a performance in itself. It seems very promising as far as the potential of future developments is concerned.”

More tests are being carried out now to turn this concept into an operational service that is reliable and affordable for users.

This new approach for organic farming was developed by Keyobs, VISTA and Belgium’s University of Liège under the guidance of Ecocert, as part of an ESA Earth Observation Market Development project.

ESA

(Valladolid, 20 September 2011) The satellite Deimos 1 has orbited the Earth 10,700 times and has recorded 7,800 images during the first two years since its launch.


  • DEIMOS 1 was launched in July 2009 and was the first European Earth-observation satellite to be funded exclusively by private capital
  • The satellite’s operations are controlled from the Boecillo Technology Park in Valladolid
  • DEIMOS 1’s unique achievements include a full inventory of the world’s tropical rainforests, carried out for the European Space Agency

Elecnor, through its technological division Elecnor Deimos, has presented a report on the first two years in orbit of the DEMIOS 1 Earth-observation satellite. The presentation was attended by the current councilor for Economy and Employment in the Government of Castilla-León, Tomás Villanueva.

Launched on 29 July 2009 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, over the last two years DEIMOS 1 has orbited the Earth over 10,700 times and has travelled around 450 million kilometres, which is three times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Since its launch, the satellite has recorded 7,800 images of the Earth, creating a data archive that would cover an area of over 690 million km2 (nearly five times larger than the Earth’s total land mass).

After the launch, and following an initial test period to check that all its systems were functioning correctly, the first image was obtained at the beginning of August 2009. The calibration stage then began, in which all the satellite’s cameras were calibrated in order to ensure the images it recorded were of the very highest quality. This process was then followed by a manoeuvring period to place the satellite in an optimum position. The final result of all these complex technical processes was the declaration, in early 2010, that the system was fully operational.

In the words of Javier Martínez de Irujo, CEO of Elecnor Deimos, “although the launch into orbit and optimisation of such a complex satellite system is certainly remarkable, what has been truly important during these two years of operation is the great number of applications for the data gathered by DEIMOS 1, applications which range from agriculture to the environment by way of defence, climate change, deforestation, the fight against natural disasters and the control of water resources”.

Unique Achievements

In 2010, DEIMOS 1 carried out a full inventory of the Earth’s tropical rainforests on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA) and throughout 2011 it has continued to work for the European Union and the ESA as part of the GMES programme, providing complete coverage of Africa.

This year, DEIMOS 1 was also chosen by the US Department of Agriculture to provide complete monthly coverage of the United States, thereby enabling monitoring via satellite of the country’s agriculture industry.

The subsidiary company Elecnor Deimos Imaging is directly responsible for the development, operation and commercial exploitation of the satellite. Its CEO, Pedro Duque, stated that “we have been gaining more clients and have achieved sales in countries in five different continents, to organisations that have expressed on numerous occasions their great satisfaction with, and recognition of, the exceptional quality of the images we have provided”.

Among DEIMOS 1’s most outstanding achievements during its first two years of operation is the distinction of being the first satellite to provide United Nations relief agencies with images of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 4 March, thus assisting the agencies in their rescue efforts. DEIMOS 1 has played an important role in helping to deal with a number of natural disasters, including the flooding in Jerez and Asturias in 2010, the forest fire in Benicolet, Valencia, in April 2011, the recent fires in Arizona and the floods caused by the Mississippi River in the United States.

The Role of Boecillo

DEIMOS 1 has turned Elecnor Deimos into the foremost operator of observation satellites in Spain and one of the global leaders in the field. The efforts of the team at Ground Control, Process and Applications at the Boecillo Technology Park in Valladolid have been key to achieving this success: in the words of Pedro Duque, the team “has shown that they are highly prepared and capable of adapting to any circumstances”.

The satellite is controlled from Boecillo, which is also where potential problems with the satellite or its monitoring stations are solved and where downloaded images are processed and then converted into real applications of interest to the company’s clients.

As stated by the CEO of Elecnor Deimos, “the experience accumulated at Boecillo by the operations and image-processing teams and the developers of added-value products is unmatched anywhere in the world, and allows us to look to the future with optimism. The infrastructure created here at the technology park will also be key to the success of our second satellite, DEIMOS 2, a project that is now being implemented and which will pose a new technological challenge”.

Source Traders

Japanese Weathernews will launch a satellite in September 2012 that will provide navigational services to ships travelling along the Russian and North American coasts in the Arctic Ocean, the newspaper Nikkei reported.

A 30 percent reduction in sea ice coverage over the last 30 years due to global warming has opened up the Arctic Ocean to shipping, including the shortest sea route between Europe and Asia.

The satellite will be launched from the Yasny launch base in Russia’s Orenburg region. The cost of development and launch will be about $1.7 million. It will circle the Earth 15 times a day.

The satellite will transmit images and information about sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Weathernews will combine the information with available data on sea currents, weather and wave height to provide consumers with a finished product enabling safe navigation along the northern route.

“Even a one-week reduction in travel time will significantly reduce fuel costs and speed cargo delivery to the end point. Moreover, this route is much safer than other routes that expose ships to attack from Somali pirates,” Nikkei reported, citing a major Japanese shipping company.

Source: RIA Novosti and Spacedaily

New calibration satellite required to make accurate predictions, say scientists

A new paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, explains weaknesses in our understanding of climate change and how we can fix them. These issues mean predictions vary wildly about how quickly temperatures will rise. This has serious implications for long term political and economic planning. The papers lead author is Dr Nigel Fox of The National Physical Laboratory, The UK’s National Measurement Institution.

The Earth’s climate is undoubtedly changing, but how fast and what the implications will be are unclear. Our most reliable models rely on data acquired through a range of complex measurements. Most of the important measurements – such as ice cover, cloud cover, sea levels and temperature, chlorophyll (oceans and land) and the radiation balance (incoming to outgoing energy) – must be taken from space, and for constraining and testing the forecast models, made over long timescales. This presents two major problems.

  • Firstly, we have to detect small changes in the levels of radiation or reflection from a background fluctuating as a result of natural variability. This requires measurements to be made on decadal timescales – beyond the life of any one mission, and thus demands not only high accuracy but also high confidence that measurements will be made in a consistent manner.
  • Secondly, although the space industry adheres to high levels of quality assurance during manufacture, satellites, particularly optical usually lose their calibration during the launch, and this drifts further over time. Similar ground based instruments would be regularly calibrated traceable to a primary standard to ensure confidence in the measurements. This is much harder in space.

The result is varying model forecasts. Estimates of global temperature increases by 2100, range from ~2-10◦C. Which of these is correct is important for making major decisions about mitigating and adapting to climate change: for instance how quickly are we likely to see serious and life threatening droughts in which part of the world; or if and when do we need to spend enormous amounts of money on a new Thames barrier. The forecasted change by all the models is very similar for many decades only deviating significantly towards the latter half of this century.

Dr Nigel Fox, head of Earth Observation and Climate at NPL, says: “Nowhere are we measuring with uncertainties anywhere close to what we need to understand climate change and allow us to constrain and test the models. Our current best measurement capabilities would require >30 yrs before we have any possibility of identifying which model matches observations and is most likely to be correct in its forecast of consequential potentially devastating impacts. The uncertainties needed to reduce this are more challenging than anything else we have to deal with in any other industrial application, by close to an order of magnitude. It is the duty of the science community to reduce this unacceptably large uncertainty by finding and delivering the necessary information, with the highest possible confidence, in the shortest possible time.”

The solution put forward by the paper is the TRUTHS (Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial- and Helio- Studies) mission, a concept conceived and designed at NPL. This which would see a satellite launched into orbit with the ability to not only make very high accuracy measurements itself (a factor ten improvement) but also to calibrate and upgrade the performance of other Earth Observation (EO) satellites in space. In essence it becomes “NPL in Space”.

The TRUTHS satellite makes spectrally resolved measurements of incoming solar radiation and that reflected from the ground, with a footprint similar in size to half a rugby field. The unprecedented accuracy allows benchmark measurements to be made of key climate indicators such as: the amount of cloud, or albedo (Earth’s reflectance) or solar radiation, at a level which will allow differences in climate models to be detected in a decade (1/3 that of existing instruments). Its data will also enable improvements in our knowledge of climate and environmental processes such as aerosols, land cover change, pollution and the sequestration of carbon in forests.

However, not only will it provide its own comprehensive and climate critical data sets but can also facilitate an upgrade in performance of much of the world’s Earth observing systems as a whole, both satellite and ground data sets. By performing reference calibrations of other in-flight sensors through near simultaneous observations of the same target, it can transfer its calibration accuracy to them. Similarly its ability to make high accuracy corrections of atmospheric transmittance allow it to calibrate ground networks measuring changes at the surface e.g. flux towers and forests and other reference targets currently used by satellites such as snowfields of Antarctica, deserts, oceans and the Moon. In this way it can even back correct the calibration of sensors in-flight today.

TRUTHS will be the first satellite to have high accuracy traceability to SI units established in orbit. Its own measurements and in particular the calibration of other sensors will not only aid our understanding of climate change but also facilitate the establishment and growth of commercial climate and environmental services. One of the barriers to this markets growth is customer confidence in the results and long-term reliability of service. TRUTHS enable a fully interoperable global network of satellites and data with robust trustable guarantees of quality and performance.

The novelty of TRUTHS lies in its on-board calibration system. The instruments on the TRUTHS satellite will be calibrated directly against an on-board primary standard – an instrument called a CSAR (Cryogenic Solar Absolute Radiometer). This compares the heating effect of optical radiation with that of electrical power – transferring all the difficulties associated with existing space based optical measurements (drift, contamination, etc) to more stable electrical SI units. In effect, this mimicks the traceability chain carried out on the ground in orbit.

This would make climate measurements ten times more accurate and give us models on which we could make important decisions about the future.

The project, which would be led by NPL, is being considered by different organisations. The European Space Agency has recommended looking into ways to take it forward, possibly as a collaboration with other space agencies. NASA is also keen to collaborate formally.

Nigel concludes: “Taking this forward would be an excellent investment for the UK, or any other country which supports it. This is not only an effective way to address the problem of understanding climate change, but also an excellent opportunity for business. It would grow expertise in Earth Observation and showcase the UK’s leading space expertise – an industry which is growing by 10 per cent a year. It would also provide a platform to underpin some of the carbon trading which will be a big international business in the near future.”

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The full reference for the paper is:
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2011) 369, 4028-4063
doi:10.1098/rsta.2011.0246
The URL after publication will be: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rsta.2011.0246
Nigel Fox delivered a lecture on this subject as part of NPL’s Celebrating Science lecture series, which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalCag7fQdE&feature=player_detailpage

More details can also be found at http://www.npl.co.uk/TRUTHS

About the National Physical Laboratory

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK’s National Measurement Institute and one of the UK’s leading science facilities and research centres. It is a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying the most accurate standards, science and technology available.

NPL occupies a unique position as the UK’s National Measurement Institute and sits at the intersection between scientific discovery and real world application. Its expertise and original research have underpinned quality of life, innovation and competitiveness for UK citizens and business for more than a century.

PARIS — Astrium Services’ Geo-Information division announced Sept. 19 it will provide data from its optical and radar Earth observation satellites to the commission of the 27-nation European Union (EU) under a three-year contract valued at 17 million euros ($23.5 million).

The deal is part of the commission’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program, which includes investment in European government-owned satellite systems as well as imagery purchases from commercial and non-European government satellites.

Under the contract, Astrium Services will provide data from its Spot 4 and Spot 5 optical satellites, and from its TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X radar spacecraft, all of which are in orbit. The agreement also calls for Astrium to provide imagery from Taiwan’s Formosat-2 satellite, to which the company has access through its Spot Infoterra subsidiary.

The commission will also receive an undisclosed amount of data from the two Pleiades high-resolution optical satellites scheduled for launch in the coming months and financed mainly by the French government, and the medium-resolution Spot 6 and Spot 7 optical satellites that Astrium is building on its own to replace Spot 5.

Source

A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of Earth’s protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere.

The study, published online Sunday, Oct. 2, in the journal Nature, finds the amount of ozone destroyed in the Arctic in 2011 was comparable to that seen in some years in the Antarctic, where an ozone “hole” has formed each spring since the mid-1980s. The stratospheric ozone layer, extending from about 10 to 20 miles (15 to 35 kilometers) above the surface, protects life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

The Antarctic ozone hole forms when extremely cold conditions, common in the winter Antarctic stratosphere, trigger reactions that convert atmospheric chlorine from human-produced chemicals into forms that destroy ozone. The same ozone-loss processes occur each winter in the Arctic.

However, the generally warmer stratospheric conditions there limit the area affected and the time frame during which the chemical reactions occur, resulting in far less ozone loss in most years in the Arctic than in the Antarctic.

To investigate the 2011 Arctic ozone loss, scientists from 19 institutions in nine countries (United States, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Spain) analyzed a comprehensive set of measurements. These included daily global observations of trace gases and clouds from NASA’s Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft; ozone measured by instrumented balloons; meteorological data and atmospheric models.

The scientists found that at some altitudes, the cold period in the Arctic lasted more than 30 days longer in 2011 than in any previously studied Arctic winter, leading to the unprecedented ozone loss. Further studies are needed to determine what factors caused the cold period to last so long.

“Day-to-day temperatures in the 2010-11 Arctic winter did not reach lower values than in previous cold Arctic winters,” said lead author Gloria Manney of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.

“The difference from previous winters is that temperatures were low enough to produce ozone-destroying forms of chlorine for a much longer time. This implies that if winter Arctic stratospheric temperatures drop just slightly in the future, for example as a result of climate change, then severe Arctic ozone loss may occur more frequently.”

The 2011 Arctic ozone loss occurred over an area considerably smaller than that of the Antarctic ozone holes. This is because the Arctic polar vortex, a persistent large-scale cyclone within which the ozone loss takes place, was about 40 percent smaller than a typical Antarctic vortex.

While smaller and shorter-lived than its Antarctic counterpart, the Arctic polar vortex is more mobile, often moving over densely populated northern regions. Decreases in overhead ozone lead to increases in surface ultraviolet radiation, which are known to have adverse effects on humans and other life forms.

Although the total amount of Arctic ozone measured was much more than twice that typically seen in an Antarctic spring, the amount destroyed was comparable to that in some previous Antarctic ozone holes. This is because ozone levels at the beginning of Arctic winter are typically much greater than those at the beginning of Antarctic winter.

Manney said that without the 1989 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty limiting production of ozone-depleting substances, chlorine levels already would be so high that an Arctic ozone hole would form every spring. The long atmospheric lifetimes of ozone-depleting chemicals already in the atmosphere mean that Antarctic ozone holes, and the possibility of future severe Arctic ozone loss, will continue for decades.

“Our ability to quantify polar ozone loss and associated processes will be reduced in the future when NASA’s Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft, whose trace gas and cloud measurements were central to this study, reach the end of their operational lifetimes,” Manney said. “It is imperative that this capability be maintained if we are to reliably predict future ozone loss in a changing climate.”

Source

Arkon satellites


As of 2011. The launch was originally promised in 2009 and later in 2012-2013.

ARKON-2

The spacecraft is designed to perform round-the-clock global Earth surveillance with high resolution in radio-frequency ranges Х, L, P regardless of meteorological conditions.

ARKON-2M

The spacecraft is designed to perform the Earth surveillance in X-band. Application of on-board active-phase array assures high resolution and performance.

ARKON-VICTORIA

The spacecraft is designed to perform high-periodical surveillance providing imaging in panchromatic and in six spectral zones, including simultaneous imaging in any three zones.

SAR Systems Arkon-2 (Russia):

  • (a) The original Arkon-1 satellites were equipped with hi-res optical imagers.
  • (b) The two new Arkon-2 satellites are being built for Roskosmos by Lavochkin and will be equipped with SAR imagers.
  • © The SAR imagers are being built by Vega Radio Engineering Corp.
  • (d) These operate at 3 different wavelengths – in X, L and P bands.

Source

Other sources

The Lavochkin Science and Production Association (en ruso sólo)

“Vega Radio Engineering Corp.”:http://www.vega.su/ (en ruso sólo)

(3 October 2011) Small satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) has today announced completion of the development phase of its new low-cost Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite system. Called NovaSAR-S, the system offers customers coverage of any spot on Earth in all conditions – seeing through cloud cover across both day and night.

The 400-kg NovaSAR-S design combines SSTL’s flight-proven SSTL-300 platform with an innovative S-band SAR payload, developed in collaboration with Astrium Ltd, who will be responsible for supplying the payloads. The challenge has been accommodating the power and processing requirements within a small, low-cost satellite platform. NovaSAR-S’s 3m x 1m phased array antenna was developed by space-borne SAR specialists at Astrium Ltd, and has now been successfully trialled using an airborne demonstrator. The SSTL-300 platform hosting the payload is an adaption of SSTL’s very-high-resolution imaging NigeriaSat-2 mission, which was launched in August.

“Based on highly efficient S-band solid state amplifier technology, NovaSAR-S has been designed to provide detailed imaging performance for a variety of orbits,” said Luis Gomes of SSTL. “It offers space-based radar capability to customers who might not have considered it possible – all for the equivalent cost of a traditional low cost optical Earth observation mission.”

NovaSAR-S acquires medium resolution radar imagery of 6-30 m ground sample distance, depending on the viewing mode being employed. Its four viewing modes are optimised for a wide range of applications, including flood monitoring, agricultural crop assessment, forest monitoring, land cover classification, disaster management and maritime applications – notably ship tracking and oil spill detection.

Radar images reveal surface textures instead of reflected light. A radar satellite illuminates its target with a microwave beam then records the signal bouncing back. In addition, the satellite takes advantage of its rapid motion relative to Earth’s surface to build up an image with sharpened resolution equivalent to that of a much larger ‘synthetic aperture’ antenna.

Intended for equatorial or polar low-Earth orbits, NovaSAR-S offers high data throughput of at least one million square km per day, observing in a variety of polarisation combinations to add ‘colour’ and detail to acquisitions.

The system is designed to function either independently, or as part of a constellation. A trio of NovaSAR-S satellites could image any point on the globe every day, regardless of local weather or time of day.

SSTL’s unique approach to engineering and project management means it can deliver a complete NovaSAR-S mission into orbit within 24 months. The platform has been specifically sized to facilitate low-cost launch opportunities. SSTL can also offer support on ground segment architecture, data processing and archiving and knowledge transfer, based on customer needs.

About SSTL

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) is the world’s leading small satellite company, delivering operational space missions for a range of applications including Earth observation, science and communications. The Company designs, manufactures and operates high performance satellites and ground systems for a fraction of the price normally associated with space missions, with over 400 staff working on turnkey satellite platforms, space-proven satellite subsystems and optical instruments.

Since 1981 SSTL has built and launched 36 satellites, as well as providing training and development programmes, consultancy services and mission studies for ESA, NASA , international governments and commercial customers, through an innovative approach that is changing the economics of space.

Based in Guildford, UK, SSTL is owned by EADS Astrium NV.
www.sstl.co.uk

Notes to editor:
SSTL is this week exhibiting at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Cape Town. To discuss SSTL’s new technologies with an expert visit stand 66. For more information on the IAC 2011 congress and exhibition visit www.iac2011.com.
This press release can be downloaded as a Word or Pdf document at the following url: http://www.sstl.co.uk/news-and-events
SSTL Contact:
Joelle Sykes, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited
Tel: +44 (0)1483 804243 Email: j.sykes@sstl.co.uk
Press Contact:
Robin Wolstenholme, bcm public relations
Tel: +44 (0)1306 882288 Email: r.wolstenholme@bcmpublicrelations.com