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Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company has been selected by GeoEye, Inc. to build the company’s next-generation, high-resolution Earth imaging satellite system known as GeoEye-2. Financial terms are not being disclosed at this time.

Lockheed Martin has begun start-up activities and procurement of long-lead components to support the earliest possible launch date for GeoEye-2. This effort will lead to a contract award for the design, engineering and manufacturing of the satellite and the associated command and control system.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems, a world leader in the most advanced space-based systems for government and commercial customers, designed and built the world’s first commercial, high-resolution, Earth-imaging satellite, IKONOS, which has been providing 0.82-meter ground resolution imagery to GeoEye’s customers around the globe for more than a decade.

These map-accurate images are used for applications in national security, environmental monitoring, state and local government, disaster assessment and relief, land management and for many other geospatial applications.

“GeoEye and Lockheed Martin have had a long and productive partnership since building and launching the first commercial remote sensing satellite,” said Joanne Maguire, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

“Our GeoEye-2 solution will leverage our strong government and commercial satellite system expertise and focus on operational excellence and mission success to provide GeoEye with another world-class, high-performance spacecraft for its customers.”

Matthew O’Connell, GeoEye’s chief executive officer and president, said, “We look forward to working with Lockheed Martin again and eagerly anticipate the construction and successful launch of another cutting-edge satellite which will provide proven reliability and greatly enhanced imaging capabilities for our customers.”

Lockheed Martin’s GeoEye-2 solution will build on the company’s deep heritage and ability to execute within cost and schedule in this mission area and offer increased agility, resolution and flexibility over IKONOS and GeoEye-1.

This will enable the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to provide critical geospatial situational awareness and global security information to intelligence analysts, war fighters and decision makers.

Commercial users will also benefit from access to GeoEye-2’s map-accurate color imagery. The spacecraft will feature a high-resolution ITT camera that has been in development for more than two years.

Source

On 31 March 2010 ESA launched a call for Mission Advisory Group members for the Sentinel-2 mission. The role of the Mission Advisory Group is to provide advice to ESA during development and implementation of the mission. The deadline for submission is 26 April 2010.

Within the framework of the GMES initiative, ESA is developing a series of ‘Sentinel’ satellites. As part of this development process, the Agency has released a call for Mission Advisory Group members for the Sentinel-2 mission.

Applications can be made via the following website: http://missionadvice.esa.int. Please note that the deadline for submission is 26 April 2010 (12:00 CEST).

Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) has been established to fulfil the growing need amongst European policy-makers to access accurate and timely information services to better manage the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security.

Under the leadership of the European Commission, GMES relies largely on data from satellites observing Earth. Hence, ESA – in accordance with the European Space Policy – is developing and managing the Space Component for the initiative.

To ensure the operational provision of Earth-observation data, the Space Component includes the series of five Sentinels missions being developed by ESA specifically for GMES.

The Sentinel-2 mission will fly as a pair of satellites, with the first planned to launch in 2013. Each Sentinel-2 satellite carries a Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) with a swath of 290 km. It provides a versatile set of 13 spectral bands spanning from the visible and near infrared (VNIR) to the shortwave infrared (SWIR), featuring 4 spectral bands at 10m, 6 bands at 20m and 3 bands at 60m spatial resolution.

In full operational phase, the pair of Sentinel-2 satellites will deliver imagery on all land surfaces and coastal zones every five days under cloud-free conditions, and typically every 15-30 days considering the presence of clouds.

In general, the role of the Mission Advisory Group is to provide advice to ESA during development and implementation of the mission. For more information about the Mission Advisory Group application procedure please visit the website noted above and also linked from the right-hand bar.

The Sentinel-2 mission is part of the series of five Sentinels missions being developed by ESA specifically for GMES to ensure the operational provision of Earth Observation data. Sentinel-2 will fly as a pair of satellites (each of them will carry a Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) with a swath of 290 km), from which the first is planned to launch in 2013. When it will become fully operational, the Sentinel-2 mission will deliver imagery on all land surfaces and coastal zones every five days under cloud-free conditions, and typically every 15-30 days under presence of clouds.

More information at:
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEMF1FIK97G_LPgmes_0.htmlwww.esa.int/esaLP/SEMF1FIK97G_LPgmes_0.html

On 27 February 2010, at 3:40 local time, the earth quaked in Chile with a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was located at 115 kilometer north from the city of Concepción. The number of victims counted is already more than 800, an estimated two million people are homeless.

EUROSENSE produced in the week after the disaster a pre-and post-event analysis of 2 water treatment plants and 1 oil refinery located in one of the areas that was hit the hardest, Concepción. This production was done on the basis of satellite images and open-source information, within the framework of the G-MOSAIC project (GMES services for Management of Operations, Situation Awareness and Intelligence for Regional Crises) of which EUROSENSE is part. The G-MOSAIC project is funded by the European Commission and the earth observation industry.

The ‘Rapid mapping service’ from G-MOSAIC, led by the European Union Satellite Center (EUSC), was activated on 28 February by the United Nations for the production of maps and data in support of the emergency workers in the field.

In 2009, EUROSENSE produced already a detailed Urban Atlas of Concepción and the surrounding area for the JAGUAR-project, in assignment of INDRA and funded by ESA (European Space Agency). These results were made available immediately.

EUROSENSE is part of the ‘Critical Assets Monitoring Service’ team in G-MOSAIC, which is lead by the Spanish EO company GMV. On Tuesday 02 March at 18.00, EUROSENSE was asked by EUSC to analyze the damage of 2 water treatment plants and 1 oil refinery. Accordingly, the main components of these critical assets were identified and the damage analyzed.

Based on the pre-event analysis, the available post-event imagery and the available open source information, vector files and digital maps were produced. All the collected information was summarized in a briefing report that describes the potential damage and impact of the damage.

All the products were delivered by Friday 05 March at 12.00 h and are available via the links below.

Figure 1: Post-event damage assessment of the ENAP refinery in Talcahuon, Chile. The symbols indicate the potential damage. The satellite in the background is taken before the earthquake: World View-2, 27.01.2010, 50 cm resolution (© DigitalGlobe, Inc.. 2010, provided by e-GEOS SpA under GSC-DA).

Figure 2: Pre-event analysis of Water Treatment Plant “La Mochita” in Concepción. The main components and their functions were identified. The satellite in the background predates the earthquake: Quick Bird, 03/01/2008, 70 cm resolution (© DigitalGlobe, Inc.. 2008).

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Contact

EUROSENSE
Nerviërslaan 54
B-1780 Wemmel, BELGIUM
Phone: 32_(0)_2 460_70_00
ides.bauwens@eurosense.com
http://www.eurosense.com

Links

e-Geos Rapid Mapping Service

Reliefweb

G-Mosaic website

Indonesia is intensifying efforts to map forest areas nationwide using remote-sensing satellite technology, to maximize on their role in absorbing greenhouse gas emissions, a seminar has heard.

The announcement was made first week March at the start of the three-day symposium of the 4th Asia-Pacific Global on Earth Observation System in Bali. Attending the event are delegations from 26 member states of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

The forest observations, being conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Lapan), is aimed at collecting data on forest coverage and monitoring changes in the areas, including pinpointing fire hot spots.

Lapan remote-sensing unit deputy head Nur Hidayat said Indonesia had teamed up with Australia for the project.

“We’re looking to reduce the number of forest and peatland fires by 20 percent a year, so we’re continuously observing forests using remote-sensing satellite technology,” he said.

“The number of hot spots can now be monitored in real time.

“We’re intensifying our annual monitoring of forests to collect reliable and accurate data that can be used to calculate the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon emissions.”

Data collected by the agency will be used to draft a recommendation for follow-up action from other agencies, Hidayat said.

Indonesia is targeting to cut carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020, or 2.95 gigatons of CO2, 14 percent of it to come from the forestry sector.

The country’s total forest cover is 98.5 million hectares, according to Forestry Ministry estimates. Islands with the highest coverage include Papua, which is 33 percent forest, and Kalimantan with 27.8 percent.

Lapan liaison director Ratih Dewanti Dimyati said the partnership with Australia was aimed at providing data on land changes for Indonesia’s National Carbon Accounting System (INCAS).

INCAS is a joint forest carbon partnership program between the two countries to support Indonesia in providing significant and cost-effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by reducing deforestation, encouraging reforestation and promoting sustainable forest management.
“We’re currently in the process of updating the previous data on forest areas nationwide, and we expect to complete it by the end of this year,” she said.

“However, because this is still the early stage of the observation, we can’t say conclusively if there has been any increase in deforestation or the number of hot spots.”

The agency’s will crosscheck its findings with those from the Australian team, to ensure the accuracy.
Forest fires are common across the country, particularly in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

The number of hot spots in Central Kalimantan has fluctuated wildly over the past 13 years, says the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) Indonesia.

In 2009, the figure was 4,860, up from 1,827 in the previous year and 2,793 in 2007.

Source

The 2998th Council of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) met in Brussels on 25-26 February 2010.

The Council adopted conclusions on “29 measures for reinforcing the protection of the external borders and combating illegal immigration”.

Among the five measures that concern the development of the European Surveillance System – EUROSUR, one measure specifically refers to GMES: the Council has agreed “[…]To invite the Commission to report before the end of 2010 on how the conclusions of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) border surveillance group on common application of surveillance tools, such as satellites, could be implemented in the EU land and sea borders”.

The press release presenting the Council Conclusions is available on the Council of the European Union website

Source GMES.Info

The sixth geoland Forum gathered more than 200 participants from the GMES Land community

On 24th and 25th March 2010 more than 200 participants from the GMES Land community gathered in Toulouse for the sixth geoland Forum. The forum was organised by geoland2 and hosted by Météo France.

The morning session of the first day of the event was dedicated to presenting the French GMES expectations and its perspectives. Speakers from Météo France and CNES outlined their activities related to GMES followed by a presentation of the French Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea (MEEDDM), which highlighted the need for the GMES services. However, a stronger involvement of the Member States in the development of Land Service specifications and their evaluation is still required.

In the afternoon, the programmatic frame with regards to the GMES Initial Operations (GIO) implementation plan and the scope of GMES Land Services was presented by DG Enterprise. The German bottom-up approach of national land use/ land cover mapping, expectations to GIO in relation to upcoming reporting requirements and the current status of the GMES Space Component (GSC) data access were presented by speakers from the German Mapping Agency, the European Environmental Agency and the European Space Agency. The coordinator and representatives of the geoland2 project provided a conceptual update of the status of the global, continental and local services with regards to the progress achieved in terms of pre-operational performance and delivery and its translation into operational services.

The day concluded with a presentation about the E-Hype system (a pan-European hydrological modelling for environment and security), an application which is part of geoland2, and presentations that highlighted the synergies between geoland2 and the related projects MACC and VENUS.

Day 2 was divided into four parallel workshop sessions, that explored specific topics dedicated to Mapping and Monitoring, Infrastructure logistics in the Land Service Domain, Data Access to EO Data – Lessons Learnt and the Validation & Verification & Qualification & Certification activities.

All presentations can be downloaded here

eCognition support for LiDAR and Windows extended in latest release

(Munich, Germany / Alexandria, Virginia – April 6, 2010) Definiens, the number one Enterprise Image Intelligence® company and developer of eCognition® software for geospatial analysis, today announced the launch of its latest software update for earth science professionals: eCognition 8.0.1. Among the highlights of the newest release are support for Microsoft Windows 7 Professional and LiDAR point clouds in LAS 1.2 format.

“This release is very much about supporting our core users in how they use eCognition,” says Ralph D. Humberg, VP Earth Sciences. “We’re proud to be running on the latest version of the world’s most popular operating system and offering support for the latest LiDAR file format. In doing so, we’ve taken another step to extend our commitment to the future of LiDAR and object-based image analysis.”

Direct access to point clouds in native LAS format opens up new possibilities for applying object-based analysis methods to solve LiDAR classification tasks. Current work includes classification of ground and non-ground features, extraction of building outlines, impervious surface analysis, detection of power lines and encroaching vegetation, as well as water flattening. The ability to leverage the unique capabilities of object-based image analysis, such as local context as well as feature shape and texture, allows for the automation of processes that have traditionally involved substantial manual interaction.

Definiens in Earth Sciences

Definiens enables organizations involved in Earth Sciences to quickly extract accurate geo-information from any kind of remote sensing data. The company assists data providers, value adders, scientists and end users in integrating earth observation and remote sensing data to generate accurate GIS-ready information. Definiens’ intelligent feature extraction capabilities accelerate mapping, change detection and object recognition–delivering standardized and reproducible image analysis results. Further information is available at: http://www.ecognition.com

About Definiens

Definiens is the number one Enterprise Image Intelligence® company for analyzing and interpreting images on every scale, from microscopic cell structures to satellite images. The Definiens Cognition Network Technology®, developed by Nobel laureate Prof. Gerd Binnig and his team, is an advanced and robust context-based technology designed to fulfill the image analysis requirements of the Medical, Life and Earth Sciences markets. The technology is modeled on the powerful human cognitive perception processes to extract intelligence from images. Definiens provides organizations with faster image analysis results, allowing deeper insights enabling better business decisions. The company is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and has offices in the United States. Further information is available at: http://www.definiens.com

Definiens, eCognition, Definiens Cognition Network Technology, Definiens eCognition, Enterprise Image Intelligence and Understanding Images are trademarks or registered trademarks of Definiens.

Press contacts:
Definiens AG
Todd Douglas Taylor
Senior Marketing Manager
ttaylor@definiens.com

Ricochet Public Relations, Inc.
Garry Clark
Phone: +1 212.679.3300 ×114
gclark@ricochetpr.com

UN-Spider

1. UN-SPIDER Technical Advisory Mission to Haiti in March 2010
2. UN-SPIDER carries out Technical Advisory Mission to Chile
3. UN-SPIDER meets SEGEPLAN to discuss upcoming Technical Advisory Mission to Guatemala
4. UN Subcommittee requests study on the establishment of a SpaceAid fund
5. UN-SPIDER Africa Workshop postponed
6. Understanding Risk â Join the Dialogue
7. ESA seeks to speed up emergency response
8. ESAâs Tiger II to support 20 water projects in Africa
9. DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite elevation data verified to be accurate within 30 centimeters
10. Thales begins development of Sentinel 1B and 3B environmental satellites
11. New UN satellite standards to boost communications in emergencies
12. ‘Jugnu’ nano-satellite for vegetation monitoring developed

Reference

The FUSION user workshop is scheduled on May 19, 2010 in Berlin, Germany.

FUSION will be the first satellite constellation combining high resolution satellite imagery as known from the RapidEye satellites with MIR/TIR data similar to what the BIRD infrared payload produces. Combining 6.5 m GSD VIS/NIR images with 100 m GSD infrared images, FUSION will provide new data products and worldwide daily revisit capability for fields such as precision agriculture, food security, irrigation water management, inland water resource management, terrestrial ecosystem mapping, volcanology, and high resolution wildfire monitoring.

As FUSION has the potential to serve a wide variety of applications, we aim to optimise the set of requirements that the system design will be based on. The workshop offers a unique opportunity for users to learn about FUSION, express their information needs and discuss their requirements and thus influence this mission right from the start.

Workshop tracks include:

- Introduction to the FUSION project – FUSION’s high resolution earth observation capabilities – FUSION’s unique fire detection and monitoring features – Participants’ presentations – Special addresses and panel discussions

For more information about the FUSION User Workshop, please refer to the attached announcement

FUSION_UserWorkshop_Announcement.pdf

Workshop coordination
Lilit Kocharyan
email: kocharyan@rapideye.de
phone: +49 (0)3381 8904-529
fax: +49 (0)3381 8904-101
web: http://www.rapideye.de
RapidEye AG
Molkenmarkt 30
14776 Brandenburg an der Havel
Germany

SPECIM’s Revolutionary Hyperspectral Imaging Sensor Takes off.

Oulu, Finland; April 6, 2010 – SPECIM, Spectral Imaging Ltd, the world’s leading manufacturer of hyperspectral imaging components and systems, responds to market demand and launches a new high resolution hyperspectral imaging sensor with exceptional performance and the dimensions required for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and other challenging applications.

The new V10M sensor operates in the VIS/NIR range of 380 – 1000 nm, and provides superior spectral and spatial imaging with negligible sub-pixel distortions (smile, keystone). The current sensor has an excellent spatial resolution of 1300 pixels, and a 2000 pixel version will be released later this year. The high resolution does not compromise the imaging speed, which reaches 100 images/s, and even higher rate with spectral binning. Superb optical light throughput, together with the most advanced and sensitive detector technology available, guarantees an excellent signal-to-noise ratio. The specifications meet the most demanding requirements for target detection with a wide swath width for efficiency in airborne uses, as well as provide superior performance in industrial quality control applications. The extreme performance from a light weight sensor of less than 0.9 kg (2 lb), including the spectrograph and camera, and in a format optimized to fit to small payload compartments and gimbals is the signature of the new M series sensors.

The sensor is based on the latest development in SPECIM’s market leading ImSpector series of imaging spectrographs, the ImSpector M series. This compact new technology is particularly designed to increase the spatial resolution of push-broom hyperspectral imagers, and works with detector arrays up to 24 mm wide in the spatial dimension. The design is optimized for operation in harsh conditions, and provides the option of a user exchangeable fore optic.

“Current hyperspectral imagers are either bulky with good performance, or compact, with only moderate performance. With the introduction of the new M Series, SPECIM overcomes these drawbacks, and offers clients in defense, security and industrial applications an off-the-shelf hyperspectral sensor that out performs all other sensors in the market. The M Series VIS/NIR sensor is the first step, which will be followed by the introduction of a high resolution SWIR sensor, as well a high performance, miniaturized cooled LWIR sensor in the near future. They will elevate the use of high performance hyperspectral imaging in the market place to new levels, while adding increasing value to our clients products. “ says Timo Hyvärinen, Managing Director of SPECIM.

For further information, SPECIM welcomes you to visit the booth No. 211 at SPIE Defense, Security+Sensing (DSS) exhibition in Orlando, FL, USA, 6-8 April, 2010, where the new M Series hyperspectral sensor will be displayed. The booth is hosted by both SPECIM and our partner SpecTIR LLC. Alternatively, please contact SPECIM, Spectral Imaging Ltd (tel +358 10 4244 400, email: info@specim.fi), and in the US, SpecTIR LLC (410 820 5591, email: Wbernard@SpecTIR.com) .

Contact
Timo Hyvärinen
Managing Director
SPECIM, Spectral Imaging Ltd.
tel. +358 (0)10 4244 405
cel. +358 (0)40 555 0937
fax +358 (0)8 388 580
email: timo.hyvarinen@specim.fi
www.specim.fi