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Austria and many other European countries can build on a long experience of successful activities on land cover and land use (LC/LU) monitoring. However, in Austria these datasets have been produced with different standards, lack comparability or are in most cases outdated. Stakeholders from public administrations and the private sector demand up to date, more detailed, and harmonised LC/LU information, in order to fulfil the required reporting obligations arising from new European directives and regional / national legislation.

In order to overcome the shortcomings of existing LC/LU data sets for regional, national as well as European management and reporting requirements, the project Land Information System Austria (LISA) was initated by GeoVille together with other Austrian stakeholders. The project is funded by the Austrian Space Application Program (ASAP), and was successfully kicked off on June 15th in Vienna at the Austrian Institute of Technology.

Aims

The objective of LISA is to achieve a consensus on a new Austrian land information and monitoring system and demonstrate its benefits offering improved spatial and thematic content. LISA will be designed to serve common land monitoring needs providing information on the status quo and the changes occurring in Austria’s landscape. Thereby LISA will enable a wide range of downstream sectoral applications and user groups.

The goal of LISA is to apply cutting edge science, innovative technology and provide cost efficiency by combining satellite imagery with high resolution in-situ data, to achieve economics of scale and sustainability of funding through a shared effort across different administration units.

The efficiency and user applicability is further extended to the planned distribution of LISA through geoportal’s at local, regional, national and international level. The focus of the first phase of LISA will be laid on the correct transcription of user needs into user requirements and technical product specifications, as well as the verification of their technical and economic feasibility. Representatives of the provinces and the federal government will determine the user requirements. These will be verified by a scientific / technical advisory board and lead to binding technical specifications for production. The content of the LISA catalogue will be agreed at national level and drawn up according to the demands of European initiatives such as INSPIRE and GMES.

Project Partners

The project is supported by funds from the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit) through the Austrian Space Applications Program (ASAP 6) of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

Geoville Group

GeoVille Group is a private sector enterprise located in Austria and Luxembourg. GeoVille Group specialises in products and services related to Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications.

GeoVille is Europe’s leading company in using satellite data for spatial planning applications.

GeoVille’s services provide the bridge from user needs to technical implementation – merging geospatial explicit data with statistics – to the analysis of what on-going processes and trends mean for real world applications

Ph: +43-512-5620210
Fax:+43-512-56202122
Email: info@geoville.com
Web: www.geoville.com

GeoVille Austria is a key producer and provider of digital land use (clutter) maps to the telecom industry in Austria and other nations around the world for improved radio network planning. Typically the minimum mapping unit of these maps is in the 1 to 5 ha range.


With its in-house developed processing chain RegioCover©, GeoVille produced and now serves a nationwide digital land use map, termed Regiomap Austria, with an unsurpassed price-quality ratio. RegioCover©,is a highly-automated land use mapping application, that further increases the reliability and efficacy of traditional processing approaches. It was awarded with the 2007 Definiens GMES Innovation Award.

Regiomap Austria

Regiomap Austria was produced using an object oriented image analysis and interpretation approach based on 2007-2009 15m TERRA ASTER satellite data. Class labelling was supported through orthophotos. The resulting digital land use map has 25 classes with a minimum mapping unit of 0.25ha. This means an improved spatial resolution by a factor of 16 compared to previous clutter maps available for Austria. The thematic accuracy is >95% and the geometric location accuracy is specified with ±1 pixel size.

Regiomap Austria is an off-the–shelf, GIS-ready product with a delivery time of a few days. More information and product specifications can be found on GeoVille’s website

geoville group

GeoVille Group is a private sector enterprise located in Austria and Luxembourg. GeoVille Group specialises in products and services related to Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications.

GeoVille is Europe’s leading company in using satellite data for spatial planning applications.

GeoVille’s services provide the bridge from user needs to technical implementation – merging geospatial explicit data with statistics – to the analysis of what on-going processes and trends mean for real world applications.

Ph: +43-512-5620210
Fax:+43-512-56202122
Email: info@geoville.com
Web: www.geoville.com

(8 June 2009) Canada has 401.1 millions hectares of forest (10% of the world’s forests; 30% of the world boreal forest), is the world largest exporter of forest products and the world leading exporter of softwood lumber, panels, pulp and newsprint. More than 300 Canadian communities depend on forests as an economic base.

Forest sector issues and concerns about the environment and the economy have sparked a renewed interest at local, national and international levels since the last few years (i.e. carbon, biomass, risks – fires, insects; biodiversity, forest management; sector competitiveness, etc.)

Given the importance of forests to human well-being and their sensitivity to economic development and to global climate change, it is imperative to establish an inventory of forest resources and monitor their status and trends in order to observe and understand the array of processes taking place and to provide information to the decision-makers responsible for their protection and management. Earth Observation (EO) satellites, like RADARSAT-2, can provide a cost-effective means of obtaining information, products and services in vast, barren, and often inaccessible forested areas.

To this end, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Governmental Related Initiatives Program (GRIP), in collaboration with the American Society of American Foresters, American Statistical Association, International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, IUFRO – Global Network for Forest Science Cooperation, Natural Resource Canada, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, University of Sherbrooke and the US Forest Service have initiated an international forest conference titled “Extending Forest Inventory and Monitoring over Space and Time”

More than 200 scientists and managers from around the world have gathered in Quebec City, Canada, from May 19th to May 22nd 2009, to discuss, develop and demonstrate the use and applications of EO data for forest inventory and monitoring. This international forum provided participants from scientific, governmental, non-governmental and industrial organizations an overview of EO technologies and methodologies pertaining to forest inventory and monitoring; an opportunity to become acquainted with the latest EO methods and their potential for application and to demonstrate how space based EO measurements can contribute to and support forest inventory and monitoring issues and activities through new and innovative applications.

The CSA Governmental Related Initiatives Program (GRIP) and Strategic Sector Opportunity (SSO) teams have delivered presentations related to specific Government of Canada (GoC) forest priorities (i.e. biodiversity and sustainable forest management; climate change; risks; sector competitiveness) and EO applications. In partnership with other GoC departments and agencies, the CSA-GRIP mandate is to support the development and demonstration of new applications that increase the benefits & effectiveness of GoC services for Canadians through use of EO information and resources. In the forest sector, GRIP has been developing and supporting multiple projects and initiatives, including partnerships with Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada and Parks Canada (i.e. wildfire operational systems; insects defoliation monitoring; green house gas reporting for international requirements; mapping of biomass carbon stock; operational satellite-based system for monitoring ecological integrity of Arctic national parks, etc.).

For more information click here

Source: CSA

EOportal

(16 June 2009 ) Intermediate results of forestry activity monitoring in Russia using satellite imagery were summarized. Project of regular survey of the forest condition based on satellite images, initiated by ScanEx company, has been ongoing since 2007 under the supervision of NGO Transparent World.


“Nowadays Russian forestry experiences intensive changes that had not occurred for more than 80 years. The changes concern different issues, including forest management, forest inventory, economic activities control,” explained Deputy General Director of Transparent World Dmitry Aksenov. A lot of traditional systems of data collection about forests are either destroyed, or not operating in full. Therefore, it became important to accumulate remote sensing data over the entire period of reforms, mostly starting early 2007 until present.

Project of forestry activity monitoring covered local forest divisions of Leningrad, Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Kirov Regions, Republic of Karelia, Primorsky and Krasnodar Territories. Analysis of SPOT 2/4 (10 m resolution), IRS-P6 (5,6 m) and IRS-P5 images (2,5 m) enabled to detect logging sites, their boundaries, logways and main skid roads, as well as to detect a lot of forestry management infringements:

excesses in logging sites’ acreage, width and logging cycles violations;
violations of management in protection forests with restricted regimes (protected natural areas, forest reserves, etc);
loggings outside the allocated sites;
incompliance of logging methods and other parameters to those indicated in Forest Declaration.

Forestry activity monitoring using remote sensing data is carried out on behalf of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Roslesinforg”. Project results, as well as data obtained from the respective Roslesinforg branch offices about the legality of forestry-based activities, are available on «Monitoring of forestry activity» page of the Transparent World site.

“Modern problems of the forest sector (leasing relations evolution, certification, old-growth forests protection, illegal logging prevention, etc.) require the most updated and independent data to be resolved. In 2009, satellite-based monitoring of forests and forestry activity in Russia is still ongoing,” said ScanEx Vice-President Olga Gershenzon.

Usage of updated satellite information for forestry activity monitoring in Russia is possible due to the technology of ScanEx Center, which has the biggest in the country network of RS data reception ground stations, deployed in Moscow, Nizhnevartovsk, Irkutsk and Magadan. Besides, the archive of satellite imagery has been compiling since mid 90s of the last century and contains hundreds of terabytes of data of world leading RS programs.

For more information click here

Source: ScanEx and EOportal

Following an agreement between ESA, Krunichev Space Centre and Eurockot Launch Services, ESA’s next Earth Explorer mission SMOS and a secondary payload, the technology demonstrator Proba-2 satellite, will now launch on 2 November 2009.

The new November launch date follows a rescheduling of the previously announced date of 9 September. Both the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite and the secondary payload Proba-2, which is ESA’s second Project for Onboard Autonomy mission, will be launched together on a Rockot launch vehicle from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. This type of rocket was also used to launch ESA’s Earth Explorer Gravity Mission GOCE in March this year.

The SMOS satellite is currently in the south of France at Thales Alenia Space’s premises, where it has been in storage for the past year. The all-important Flight Acceptance Review has already been passed, which signalled that all the elements that make up the mission are in place for launch, so the satellite is ready and waiting to be shipped to the launch site.

ESA’s SMOS Project Manager Achim Hahne said, “Since the launch date has been rescheduled for November to allow time for a Russian launch, we are now looking at September before we can start the launch campaign and start shipping the satellite and support equipment to the launch site in Russia. Although the delay is a little disappointing the team is very much looking forward to launch in November.”

SMOS, or ESA’s Water Mission as it is known, will make global observations of soil moisture over Earth’s landmasses and salinity over the oceans. Through the use of a novel interferometric radiometer called MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis) developed by EADS CASA Espacio in Spain, the SMOS mission will provide global soil moisture maps at least every three days and maps of sea-surface salinity at least every thirty days.

This will lead to a better understanding of the water cycle and, in particular, the exchange processes between Earth’s surfaces and the atmosphere. Data from SMOS will help improve weather and climate models and also have practical applications in areas such as agriculture and water resource management.

Taking advantage of the launch, ESA’s Proba-2, which is a very small satellite, is being carried into space at the same time as SMOS. Proba-2 is the second in ESA’s series of small, low-cost satellites that are being used to validate new spacecraft technologies while also carrying scientific instruments. It serves as a testbed for new technologies and experiments to observe the Sun and do research into space weather.

Source ESA

The GMES Governance workshop organised by the EARSC and EUROSPACE Associations in cooperation with the GMES Bureau and the European Economic and Social Committee, EESC held on May 11 in Brussels, was successful in that it lived up to the main objective exposing possible governance models and making a first evaluation of their impact on the industry.


GMES needs to evolve into full operational maturity. This requires a sustainable programme including long-term funding commitment; a suitable governance structure and a specific legislative and regulatory framework.The type of governance which will be adopted might have a strong impact on the structuring and future of the industry.

PROGRAMME
THE IMPACT OF GMES GOVERNANCE MODELS ON INDUSTRY (09H45 – 17H30)
09h00 – 09h45: Registration
09h45: Opening by P. Kamoun (Eurospace WG on GMES)

|09h50: Welcome by L. LOBO, EESC

10h00: Presentation workshop by S. Olovsson (EARSC) and O. Lemaitre (Eurospace)
10h15 – 11h30: SESSION 1: Governance models and Industrial Views

|10h15 – 10h30 : Views from EARSC by A. JADOT

|10h30 – 10h45: Views from EUROSPACE by J-J. TORTORA

|10h45 – 11h00: Perspective from GMES Bureau by A. KARAMALI

|11h00 – 11h15: Perspective from ESA by J. ASCHBACHER

|11h15 – 11h30: Perspective from EUMETSAT by P. COUNET

11h30 – 12h00: COFFEE BREAK
12h00 – 12h30: SESSION 2: Industry Views

12h00 – 12h15: GMES Organisational and System Integration Scenarios, by Z. STOTT, Assimila

12h15 – 12h30: Actual report on economy on downstream services, by C. JOLLY, OECD

12h30-13h30: Round Table on Ocean-Atmosphere-Climate
Impact of GMES Governance on Space & Services Industry
Participants: A. Pi-Figueroa (Starlab), V. Ruiz (INSA), D. Esterhazy-TAS, P. Stephens-DMCii
Moderator: C. Jacob (Eumetnet)

13h30 – 14h30: LUNCH BREAK
14h30 – 16h00: SESSION 3: Industry Views

14h30 – 14h45: Impact of GMES Governance models on the future of Industry, by G. DEANNE, Boss4GMES
14h45 – 15h00: GMES Governance – Legal Considerations, by I. BAUMANN, BHO legal

15h00-16h00:_Round Table on Land – Emergency – Security
Impact of GMES Governance on Space & Services Industry
Participants: F. Jaskolla (Infoterra), A. di Federico (Telespazio), E. Perez (Astrium), L. Kucera (Gisat), M. Bello-Mora (Deimos), C. Hoffman (Geoville-Group)
Moderator: C. Pradhan (EARSC Director)

16h00-16h30:COFFEE BREAK

16h30-17h30:_FINAL ROUND TABLE
The impact of GMES governance models on Industry
Participants: J. Chenet (TAS), J. Conway (Spot Infoterra Group), P. Norris-Logica, P. Volk (GAF), M. Gross-Eurosense Bulgary, C. Gomez (GMV)
Moderator: P. Kamoun (Eurospace WG on GMES)

Workshop Material
EARSC Statement on GMES Governance
Eurospace views on GMES Governance
Round table questions
Programme 11May2009
List Participants GMES Governance 11May2009

Stakeholder´s active involvement will help to discuss, with small and large industries as well as European and national institutions and users, the perspectives within GMES for the downstream services sector.

PCI News on Geospatial Leadership Award, ESRI’s Business Partner Program and Geospatial Web Conferencing Technology

PCI Geomatics Wins Geospatial Leadership Award

PCI Geomatics has won the Geospatial Innovator Award from GeoTec Media for its ProLines GeoImaging Server, as announced at the GeoTec Event in Vancouver, BC. The category of the ‘Geospatial Innovator Award’ recognizes geospatial tool developers that have created new software or hardware that expands the possibilities of the geospatial industry. Final nominees were selected from a large pool of applicants nominated by the GeoTec media audience.

Launched in April 2009, the ProLines GeoImaging Server is based on a GPU/CUDA implementation, and has successfully demonstrated the ability to automatically orthorectify 3TBs of imagery per day (approximately equivalent to all of Europe), with plans to demonstrate an 11TB per day system by the end of 2009.

http://www.pcigeomatics.com/pressnews/2009_PCI_geotec.html

For more information on the ProLines GeoImaging Server

PCI Geomatics Joins ESRI’s Business Partner Program

PCI Geomatics has joined the ESRI Business Partner Program. Together with ESRI, they will provide users with optimized desktop and server based workflows for correcting commercial satellite imagery along with tools for processing and analyzing radar imagery.

PCI Geomatics will produce software that is integrated closely with ArcGIS. This will allow both ESRI and PCI users to capitalize on their imagery investments and expand their use of geo-imaging and geospatial data.

http://www.pcigeomatics.com/pressnews/2009_PCI_esri_partner.html

PCI Geomatics Releases GeoConference® – Geospatial Web Conferencing Technology

PCI Geomatics announced the release of its geospatial web conferencing technology, GeoConference Version 3.0, a software solution which enables groups to share and view maps and images interactively over the web, in real-time. The benefits of GeoConference include: a cost-effective way to share maps, exchange information and simultaneously receive feedback from colleagues in real-time, reduce travel expenditures, easy set up and implementation, secure distribution of geospatial data without replication, use of open data standards and integration with other geomatics technology.

http://www.pcigeomatics.com/pressnews/2009_PCI_geoconference.html

For more information on GeoConferencing

(26th June, 2009) INNOVA Consorzio per l’Informatica e la Telematica has assisted ASI (Italian Space Agency) in a detailed study of how the COSMO-SkyMed system responds to an emergency situation, looking into the specific case of the 5.8 Ml magnitude earthquake that hit central Italy on Monday 6th of April 2009.

The COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) constellation has been designed and developed to maximise its flexibility and innovative data acquisition capabilities, taking into account three operational modes:

Routine mode, the nominal operation of the system, in which the planning is scheduled every 24 hours;

Crisis mode, where planning is done every 12 hours. In this mode it is possible to specify the areas of acquisition. Any crisis acquisition requests have absolute priority;

Very urgent mode, asynchronous acquisition activated under exceptional circumstances in order to obtain acquisitions of a specific area in the fastest possible manner.

The acquisition schedule can be rapidly changed to ensure the prompt response of the system to a crisis or emergency situation. When added to the special characteristics of the constellation, its ground segment, the high resolution products generated and their usability in applications to prevent, monitor and manage natural disaster and emergency situations, CSK becomes a sensor of maximum importance to supply essential information to entities in charge of planning and carrying out assistance, first aid and detailed evaluation of the damages caused by an emergency situation.

The detailed study carried out by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in collaboration with INNOVA is based on the analysis of historical COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) data of the disaster area acquired by the system before the event and the large number of images acquired of the Abruzzo area after the earthquake of the 6th of April. The object of the study is to carry out a detailed interferometric analysis of all available CSK of the disaster area, provide detailed information of the seismic events that have taken place in the Abruzzo area, and assess the value of CSK data to monitor and manage natural disaster and emergency situations and to produce mathematical models of the physical phenomena behind them.

A brief preview

Fig. 1 shows a CSK Stripmap Interferogram of the earthquake area, based on a pre-event master dated 23rd March and a post-event slave dated 23rd April. The topographic phase has been removed using SRTM DEM.

Fig. 2 shows the 204 shelters that form one of the homeless tent camps put up by aid workers to house 40,000 of the 66,000 people left homeless by the earthquake. The left hand side of the figure shows a CSK Spotlight Multi-temporal image using RGB technique. The colour blue shows the changes that have taken place in the area after the earthquake. The individual tents are clearly visible to the naked eye, as clearly evident when comparing to the optical equivalent from a DigitalGlobe image.

The full paper of the study will be presented during the 15th Ka and Broadband Communications Navigation and Earth Observation Conference, that will take place from the 23rd to the 25th of September in Cagliari, Italy.

All activities have been carried out within the ASI-INNOVA contract “ASI-GRID”.

Figure 1 – CSK Stripmap Interferogram 23rd March – 23rd April and Figure 2 – CSK Spotlight Multi-temporal RGB & DigitalGlobe Optical equivalent

About INNOVA

Headquartered in Matera, Italy, INNOVA Consorzio per l’Informatica e la Telematica s.r.l. is a technology provider in the remote sensing field, with experience in the development of Fleet Management and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), know-how and expertise geared towards the Earth Observation industry and the Public Administration Sector, and highly specialized knowledge of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), High Performance Computing (HPC) and GRID technology.

For more information, please contact our International Relations Manager, Marina Doubell:
Email: doubell@consorzio-innova.it
Phone: +39.0835.1852129
Website: www.consorzio-innova.com

Satellite Services BV of The Netherlands announces the release of is Versatile High Rate Earth Resources Demodulator (ERSDEM-3 VHRM) which is capable of operating up to 1.2Gbps.

The ERSDEM-3 VHRM is targeted at the Earth Observation market and provides users with both single and multi-channel options in a single system. The ERSDEM-3VHRM supports the standard coding schemes plus up and coming standards such as 4D-PSK.

The control and monitoring software delivered with the system provides the user with facilities to control and monitor the system and include real-time (multi-channel) demodulator scatter diagram display and product confidence data tagged of the incoming data.

The ERSDEM-3 VHRM can be integrated with Satellite Services BV Data Ingestion / Processing systems that support a range of industry standard DAS / NAS solutions.

For further information please visit www.spacelinkngt.com

(Source Satellite Services BV)

In this issue of EOMAG, EARSC will have the opportunity to feature an interview with Susanne Mecklenburg and Achim Hahne to talk about some aspects relevant for the SMOS Mission.


INTRODUCTION

Please tell us something generic about your role as mission manager and the responsabilities for throughout the process of designing, building and the future launching SMOS

Susanne Mecklenburg: Since I became the SMOS Mission Manager in June 2007 I am responsible for all aspects of the mission in the operations phase. This means I will take care of the smooth running of the mission after launch in autumn 2009 and the subsequent commissioning phase and, most importantly, of the scientific exploitation of the data. We are now in the final stages of the development phase, which is led by my colleague Achim Hahne at ESA-ESTEC. He has been taking care of building the mission over the last years since SMOS was selected as the second Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission in 1999.

At the moment I am busy planning the operations phase, which comprises all scientific, technical and financial aspects of the mission. We now have all the ESA internal and industrial teams in place that will support the SMOS operations. The main activities at the moment focus on preparing for the SMOS commissioning phase, which will last 6 months after launch. This time will be dedicated to the calibration and validation activities, which are a major undertaking in any environmental science related satellite mission. Once the data get to the ground they need to be checked in terms of whether they make sense and can be used for scientific research.

DEFINITION PHASE

How did the SMOS mission come about and what was involved in formulating the concept for the SMOS mission?

Achim Hahne: Formally speaking, the starting point for the SMOS mission was the proposal submitted by Y. Kerr and J. Font as Principle Investigators to ESA’s first Call for Proposals in the first slice of the Earth Observation Envelope Programme.

However, the work on the proposal was preceded by about 8-10 years of scientific investigations and technology development, which laid the foundation for the credibility of the proposed mission. The technology development covered not only the instrument principle and the receiver technology but also mission-critical elements like an overall calibration methodology, the principle of the structure and deployment mechanism, and the optical fiber harness for fast and radio- emission free data transmission.

During the definition phase, how difficult was it to balance the scientific requirements with what is feasible from an engineering perspective?

Achim Hahne: In spite of all this preparatory work there were moments in the early definition phase in which painful decisions had to be made: deletion of the additional C-band array, reduction of the numbers of receivers on the arm segments and in the hub. This could only be achieved in close cooperation with the involved scientists, by tuning other mission parameters or through ingestion of external data e.g. from ECMWF. Without these drastic measures, the mission would probably not have been feasible within the financial and programmatic boundaries (e.g. use of a recurrent PROTEUS satellite bus).


SMOS waiting for launch, Thales Alenia Space in Cannes in April 2009 ©ESA

TEAM

How many people work on the project?

Achim Hahne: In the beginning, the main effort was concentrating on the payload development and delivery. With a small but experienced ESA project team, an excellent team spirit grew quite quickly between the ESA project team, the scientists, and the involved industry lead by EADS CASA (Spain). At the peak of the payload activities, just a little less than 100 people were working on SMOS issues in agencies, academia, and industry.

Please tell us about challenges SMOS have presented so far?

Achim Hahne: With the delivery of the payload to Thales Alenia Space (France), emphasis shifted from the development of novel technologies to an orderly environmental and functional test programme at satellite and system level. This put the French partner agency CNES into the foreground, as they hold the contracts for the satellite AIT programme and will operate, eventually, the satellite from the generic PROTEUS Satellite Operations Ground Segment.

Of course, different agencies not only have different internal rules and regulations but also different cultures, which have to be recognised and accepted.

Which partners are involved and how does the SMOS team work?

Susanne Mecklenburg: The SMOS mission is special in that three different agencies were involved and supported the development of the mission. In addition to the ESA funding there were significant national contributions provided by the French and Spanish space agencies, CNES and CDTI. This collaborative approach will partly continue in the operations phase, where ESA will be responsible for the overall coordination of the mission and the ground segment operations, whereas CNES will be operating the spacecraft. There is a significant number of ESA and CNES staff and industrial teams involved in the operations being located at different stations covering a variety of functionalities. The main stations to keep SMOS running day-to-day will be at ESAC Villafranca hosting the main part of the Data Processing Ground Segment and at CNES in Toulouse hosting the Satellite Operations Ground Segment, with their respective receiving stations. In addition we will operate another X-Band receiving station at Svalbard guaranteeing a near-real time data delivery to a few operational agencies such as ECMWF and MétéoFrance.

Other SMOS related stations are at Kiruna, where the reprocessing and archiving of the data will be done, at ESA-ESRIN in Frascati, which will host the mission management and the user services, and at ESA-ESTEC in Noordwijk, where the Post Launch Support Office will be located. This team will be responsible for the maintenance of the satellite and payload performances and will intervene in case of anomalies, reacting quickly to rectify non-nominal performances of the mission.

In addition to the teams that keep the mission running on a day-to-day basis we will have so called Expert Support Laboratories, consisting of industrial and scientific groups, supporting the calibration of the SMOS MIRAS data and the development of the retrieval algorithms to derive SMOS level 2 data for soil moisture and sea surface salinity. These consortia are strongly linked and scientifically led by the SMOS Principal Investigator Yann Kerr from Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère (CESBIO, Toulouse) and the Co-Principle Investigator Jordi Font from Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM, Barcelona). In addition, there will be strong national efforts to develop level 3 (global, single-instrument) and 4 (global, multi-instrument) SMOS data products through the French Centre Aval de Traitement des Donnees SMOS (CATDS) and the Spanish SMOS Level 3/4 Processing Centre (CP34).


SMOS ground segment: the various functionalities will be covered by ESA and industrial teams ©ESA

USERS and PRODUCTS

Who will be the main users and how will SMOS data be delivered to users?

Susanne Mecklenburg: There are two main groups of users. Scientists, such as oceanographers, hydrologists, atmospheric physicists etc., will use the global measurements for their research projects. We already have a significant number of registered users who will receive data directly from the Data Processing Ground Segment at Villafranca or from the archive in Kiruna.

The other group of users, including the ECMWF and national meteorological services, will focus more on operational applications. They have requested to receive SMOS measurements within three hours of acquisition to assimilate the data into their forecasting models. ESA has responded to this need by establishing a near-real time service by funding a further ground station at Svalbard that will receive SMOS data more frequently than the ESAC station at Villafranca. ECMWF and MétéoFrance in particular are already now working on integrating these data in their predictive models, testing the improvements SMOS data will be able to make to meteorological forecasts.

What information can SMOS provide to potential users and what benefits will SMOS bring?

Susanne Mecklenburg: The original proposal for the SMOS mission was submitted more than 10 years ago with the main motivation to address the lack of global measurements of soil moisture and ocean salinity. These are two very important variables in the Earth’s water cycle and climate system, yet there are currently no global observations available. Furthering our knowledge about soil moisture, especially in the root zone, will improve short- and medium-term meteorological modelling, hydrological modelling, the monitoring of plant growth and the forecasting of hazardous events, such as floods. Global observations of ocean salinity will support the monitoring and modelling of the ocean circulation, which plays a crucial part in the climate system. In addition, SMOS will also improve the characterisation of ice and snow covered surfaces. Thus, the SMOS observations will be really innovative and make a significant change to many areas of research and applications. However, as with all Earth Explorer missions, these are really novel concepts and data and we will have to invest effort and time to exploit them to the full.

How will you compare SMOS products with others?

Susanne Mecklenburg: There will also be other soil moisture and ocean salinity observations provided by two satellite missions from NASA, Aquarius and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), which will be launched over the next years. Both will measure in the same spectral region, L-Band, as SMOS, but will also have different features that will make them complementary to the SMOS data. We are working closely with these two teams and hope to combine the data in future.

COOPERATION & PARTNERSHIP WITH EO INDUSTRY

How important is it involving the EO service providers with the development of a mission such as SMOS?

Susanne Mecklenburg: For the operations phase we already have strong support from the EO service industry in place for all aspects of running the mission on a day-to-day basis. The support ranges from the acquisition, processing, quality control, distribution and archiving of the data to the maintenance and evolution of the systems we use. We are presently finishing the development of all the systems and services of the SMOS ground segment, working closely also with CNES. Final tests are underway and we are confident to have a robust and reliable system in place at the time of launch.

INDUSTRY CONTRACTORS

What role does the Prime Contractor play?

Achim Hahne: The specific programmatic setup with ESA and CNES cooperating for the space segment had one major implication for the industrial construction: the absence of an overall prime contractor! Whilst the payload was developed by EADS CASA under ESA contract, the provision of the PROTEUS platform and the merging of the platform and payload was done by Thales Alenia Space under CNES contract. Hence, the two cooperating agencies had to jointly assume the role of a prime contractor. This made the development particularly challenging but also rewarding.

What challenges has SMOS in terms of design? Will advancements made here also benefit future space missions?

With the excellent results obtained with the MIRAS instrument during ground testing, the concept of interferometry at microwave frequencies is now gaining momentum. Technology preparations for an operational SMOS – follow on have started, and concept studies for interferometric observations from the geostationary orbit are under way.


Industrial teams involved in developing the SMOS mission ©ESA

FUTURE & SOCIETY

At the end of the interview, here is the opportunity for your final thoughts on the future, what do you see as the task ahead and would you like to give some message to the industry interested in SMOS products?

Susanne Mecklenburg: Of course we are always interested to have new users for SMOS data on board. ESA’s data policy foresees to make Earth Observation data as widely and freely available as possible. Therefore all data will be made available through the ESA category-1 procedure, either through dedicated Announcements of Opportunities or, for users who have not participated in the past AOs, registration service online EOPI. If you are interested in further information you can also consult the ESA Bulletin special issue on SMOS

More information at ESA Website

Thank you for your time, and for sharing your thoughts and comments with the EOmag readers

Eomag! 18_ Interview with Susanne Mecklenburg and Achim Hahne to talk about some aspects relevant for the SMOS Mission.pdf