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Cambridge, On, Aug. 16, 2016 – exactEarth Ltd. (TSX: XCT), the leading provider of Satellite AIS data services (Joint-venture of Hisdesat and COMDEV) announces that it has been selected by the Fisheries Commission (West Africa Regional Fisheries Programme), an agency of the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MOFAD) of the Government of Ghana, for the provision of Satellite AIS data services as well as a small vessel tracking solution. The contract value is in a range of $1.0-$2.0 million for a 12 month period and will enable Ghana to acquire the technology necessary to monitor its expansive coastlines and deter illegal fishing in its national waters.

Along with a comprehensive Satellite AIS data feed, exactEarth will provide MOFAD with 450 Class B AIS transceivers to be installed on inshore fishing vessels which will be tracked via satellite utilising exactEarth’s exactTraxTM small vessel tracking technology. In order to address the rampant Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing around Ghana’s Exclusive Economic Zone, MOFAD have provisioned this small vessel tracking solution to gain access to detailed fishing vessel positions and movement analysis services through the exactEarth ShipView™ platform. exactEarth ShipView will be upgraded to include a SOS alerting facility in an effort to support Ghana’s government in their “safety of life at sea” initiative, which is intended to help its fishermen. exactEarth will be working with a local partner and academic institutions in Ghana to provide vessel movement analysis and reporting to help inform policy decision making and also to engage the next generation maritime professionals in coastal surveillance to protect and preserve Ghana`s fish stock for the future.

“This is an important strategic win and a major step forward for our small vessel tracking initiative,” said Peter Mabson, exactEarth CEO. “MOFAD needs a high performance, reliable and compliant maritime monitoring solution to protect their critical fishing industry and our small vessel tracking capabilities will be an integral part of helping them achieve that objective. This reflects the growing opportunity for both our large and small vessel tracking solutions and our reputation for having the leading Satellite AIS solution on the market.”

About exactEarth Ltd.

exactEarth is a leading provider of global maritime vessel data for ship tracking and maritime situational awareness solutions. Since its establishment in 2009, exactEarth has pioneered a powerful new method of maritime surveillance called Satellite-AIS (“S-AIS”) and has delivered to its clients a view of maritime behaviours across all regions of the world’s oceans unrestricted by terrestrial limitations. exactEarth has deployed an operational data processing supply chain involving a constellation of satellites, receiving ground stations, patented decoding algorithms and advanced “big data” processing and distribution facilities. This ground-breaking system provides a comprehensive picture of the location of AIS equipped maritime vessels throughout the world and allows exactEarth to deliver data and information services characterized by high performance, reliability, security and simplicity to large international markets. For more information, visit exactearth.com.

Milan, 19 September 2016. TRE ALTAMIRA has mapped ground motion and detected land changes in the Central Italy area struck by the earthquake using different kinds of processing algorithms and radar satellite platforms. This is our contribution to the understanding of what happened before, during and after the catastrophic event.

The earthquake hit on 24 August 2016, reducing to rubble the towns of Accumoli, Amatrice and Pescara del Tronto, and killing 300 people. The epicentre was identified around the town of Accumoli.

Some results of our analyses over the area are reported in the gallery at the TRE website link

The European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) is proud to announce new agreement (SLA) between a group of EGI Resource Centres and Terradue Srl, a leading company in delivering e-Infrastructures for earth sciences. “Teaming up with a major European Cloud Computing provider through our Partner Programme is reinforcing the strategic evolutions of Terradue Cloud Platform” said Hervé Caumont, head of Terradue Platform Operations, “as this new capacity will support our users to run near real-time processing of satellite data acquisitions”.

Terradue was awarded by the European Space Agency technical lead role to develop and operate the cloud infrastructure supporting user communities on the geohazards and hydrology thematic exploitation platforms. Terradue Cloud Platform is designed to address the challenges traditionally associated with the handling of massive and complex data streams that can support thematic expertise (e.g. large earth observation datasets relevant to geohazards studies, or hydrological information collected from multiple models and data streams).

EGI has a mission to create and deliver open solutions for science and research infrastructures by federating digital capabilities, resources and expertise between communities and across national boundaries.

Thanks to the agreement, that will be valid for at least one year, Terradue will be able to access European cloud resources delivered by the following resource centres within EGI:

  • 100% IT (UK)
  • CESGA (Spain)
  • CYFRONET-CLOUD (Poland)
  • HG-09-Okeanos-Cloud (GRNET, Greece)
  • RECAS-BARI (Italy)
  • GoeGrid (Germany)

In total, the 6 resource centres offer more than 360 virtual CPU cores, 800 GB of memory and 10TB of storage.

Giuseppe la Rocca, Technical Outreach Expert at the EGI Foundation, facilitated the establishment of bilateral Service Level Agreements: “These agreements offer Terradue the possibility to use EGI resources for helping researchers to tackle new data challenges.”

Cesare Rossi, Manager of Cloud Computing Solutions at Terradue, also commented: “We are very happy to have Service Level Agreements established with EGI.eu. They extend our hybrid cloud infrastructure using a new OpenNebula OCCI driver, and provide a reliable Cloud infrastructure for the ESA Thematic Exploitation Platforms users”.

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Oceans might not be thought of as magnetic, but they make a tiny contribution to our planet’s protective magnetic shield. Remarkably, ESA’s Swarm satellites have not only measured this extremely faint field, but have also led to new discoveries about the electrical nature of inner Earth.

The magnetic field shields us from cosmic radiation and charged particles that bombard Earth from the Sun. Without it, the atmosphere as we know it would not exist, rendering life virtually impossible.

Scientists need to learn more about our protective field to understand many natural processes, from those occurring deep inside the planet, to weather in space caused by solar activity. This information will then yield a better understanding of why Earth’s magnetic field is weakening.

Although we know that the magnetic field originates in different parts of Earth and that each source generates magnetism of different strengths, exactly how it is generated and why it changes is not fully understood.

This is why, in 2013, ESA launched its trio of Swarm satellites.

While the mission is already shedding new light on how the field is changing, this latest result focuses on the most elusive source of magnetism: ocean tides.

When salty ocean water flows through the magnetic field, an electric current is generated and this, in turn, induces a magnetic response in the deep region below Earth’s crust – the mantle. Because this response is such a small portion of the overall field, it was always going to be a challenge to measure it from space.

Last year, scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, showed that if it could be measured from space – never done before – it should also tell us something about Earth’s interior. However, this all remained a theory – until now.

Thanks to Swarm’s precise measurements along with those from Champ – a mission that ended in 2010 after measuring Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields for more than 10 years – scientists have not only been able to find the magnetic field generated by ocean tides but, remarkably, they have used this new information to image the electrical nature of Earth’s upper mantle 250 km below the ocean floor.

Alexander Grayver, from ETH Zurich, said, “The Swarm and Champ satellites have allowed us to distinguish between the rigid ocean ‘lithosphere’ and the more pliable ‘asthenosphere’ underneath.”

The lithosphere is the rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle, while the asthenosphere lies just below the lithosphere and is hotter and more fluid than the lithosphere.

“Effectively, ‘geo-electric sounding from space’, this result is a first for space exploration,” he continues.

“These new results are important for understanding plate tectonics, the theory of which argues that Earth’s lithosphere consists of rigid plates that glide on the hotter and less rigid asthenosphere that serves as a lubricant, enabling plate motion.”

Roger Haagmans, ESA’s Swarm mission scientist, explained, “It’s astonishing that the team has been able to use just two years’ worth of measurements from Swarm to determine the magnetic tidal effect from the ocean and to see how conductivity changes in the lithosphere and upper mantle.

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WESTMINSTER, Colo.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Oct. 11, 2016— DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI), the global leader in Earth imagery and information about our changing planet, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held The Radiant Group, Inc. (“Radiant”) from Aston Capital for $140 million in cash.

The acquisition of Radiant combines two industry leaders recognized for delivering innovative solutions that help customers harness the power of Earth imagery and other forms of geospatial information. Upon completing the transaction, DigitalGlobe will strengthen its position as the leading commercial source of geospatial information and insight with the capability and scale to address the needs of the world’s largest and most sophisticated customers. The combined DigitalGlobe Services business will support critical national security missions with an expanded portfolio of advanced capabilities that extend across the entire geospatial intelligence value chain.

Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, Radiant has built a strong and growing presence within the U.S. Intelligence Community and has contracts with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

“The acquisition of The Radiant Group represents an important step in deriving new insights for customers from DigitalGlobe’s imagery and other geospatial information sources,” said Jeffrey R. Tarr, Chief Executive Officer of DigitalGlobe. “Combining Radiant with DigitalGlobe greatly enhances both organizations’ capabilities, expands our customer base across the U.S. Intelligence Community and increases our access to contract vehicles. Importantly, this acquisition also brings together hundreds of innovative developers and analysts with expertise in geospatial big data and analytics. Combined with the world’s most advanced commercial Earth-imaging capability, unrivaled archive and platforms, these capabilities position us to deliver more value to customers and shareowners.”

“We are proud to have built Radiant into an innovative technology and analytics business with a proven track record supporting Defense and Intelligence Customers,” said Bobby Basil, a partner at Aston Capital. “The acquisition will expand DigitalGlobe’s customer base across the Intelligence Community, and simultaneously accelerate the pace of innovation in big data analytics and machine learning at the company. This is a very exciting development for the industry.”

Strategic and Financial Benefits of the Transaction

  • Broadens DigitalGlobe’s capabilities across the entire geospatial intelligence value chain, including smart tasking, collection, processing, big data analytics and delivery of insights.
  • Brings together hundreds of innovative developers and analysts with expertise in big data analytics, cloud computing and machine learning to solve complex geospatial intelligence challenges.
  • Expands DigitalGlobe’s customer base across the U.S. Intelligence and Special Operations Communities through more than 80 additional contract vehicles and deepens the company’s relationship with its largest customer.
  • Diversifies revenue, reduces asset intensity and is accretive to growth in revenue, EBITDA, net income and other key financial metrics.

Financial Profile and Transaction Details

  • Total cash consideration of $140 million.
  • To be funded with cash on hand and drawings under existing revolving line of credit.
  • Reaffirm commitment to completing share repurchase program.
  • Expected 2016 Radiant revenue of approximately $100 million.
  • Historical Radiant organic revenue growth above 10%.
  • Closing expected by end of 2016, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

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Geo4i is pleased to announce that thanks to its partnership with European Space Imaging, we are now able to provide 3D data from Vricon DTM (http://www.vricon.com/).

With its access to Digital Globe high quality satellite imagery, Vricon allows you to benefit from a highly accurate 3D environment in a large number of format.

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EarthCARE is an earth-observation mission being carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with Japan’s Space Agency (JAXA) and its National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT); it forms part of an initiative known as Earth Explorers, designed by ESA to address specific areas of public concern as identified by the science community within the field of earth sciences; each of these core missions centers its research on a different aspect of earth science. EarthCARE itself, slated for a 2018 launch, will study clouds, aerosols and their interaction with the sun’s radiation.

GMV has recently won contracts to carry out several important activities in relation to ESA’s Space Operations Centre (ESOC), including the setting up of the satellite control center, in charge of real-time command and telemetry processing, and also development of the operational simulator to be used for training of the operations team and validation of flight procedures. These new contract awards strengthen GMV’s position as one of the world’s leading suppliers of satellite control centers. In particular GMV has provided the control centers for the vast majority of ESA’s earth observation missions (GOCE, Cryosat-1/2, Swarm, Sentinel1,2,3 and 5p series) and of interplanetary missions like Bepi Colombo.

EarthCARE will provide global measurements of vertical atmospheric profiles to improve parametrization of clouds and aerosols in climate models and study their influence on the earth’s radiative balance. The main instrument, a broadband radiometer (BBR), will give instant readings of the outgoing reflected solar radiation and the emitted thermal radiation from Earth. These readings, using the right conversion models, can then be turned into measurements of the associated energy flux.

Under this same mission GMV has also been awarded the CLARA project (Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Assessment Products for EarthCARE), in which it will be responsible for scientific development and operational software of the mission’s radiation products. GMV in particular is leading development of BBR’s radiance-to-flux conversion algorithms.

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(Monday, 10 October 2016). e-GEOS takes part today in the Conference “The Arctic Council and the Italian Perspective”, organised at Palazzo della Farnesina by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, jointly with the Institute of International Affairs, the National Research Council (CNR) and the Italian Society for International Organisation (SIOI). The event will focus on the activities of the Arctic Council, which Italy participates in as Observer, and the international cooperation initiatives of interest for Italy from a political, scientific and entrepreneurial standpoint.

The Arctic region is undergoing profound climate change, offering new opportunities for development and exploitation of resources while posing risks for the natural and human environment. The withdrawal of ice, in fact, is followed by a growth in economic activities, leading to the transformation of the region into a theatre of international cooperation in the economic, maritime and transport sectors, as well as by increasing security requirements linked to the exploitation of resources, with a strong focus on interaction with the environment and the prevention of accidents.

Italian’s satellite technology is already successfully employed in the Arctic region, where e-GEOS – joint venture between Telespazio (80%) and the Italian Space Agency (20%) – has developed partnerships in Scandinavia, thanks to which two stations for data reception from the Italian COSMO-SkyMed constellation are now operative.

The COSMO-SkyMed radar satellites, of the Italian Space Agency and Ministry of Defence – the instrument of choice for observing and monitoring such remote regions, wide-ranging as well as difficult from the meteorological point of view – are able to support sustainable development of the Arctic, by enabling monitoring and control of human as well as natural activities.

In the 2011-2014 period, e-GEOS has provided more than three thousand COSMO-SkyMed images, covering approximately 100 million square kilometres of the Arctic region. Furthermore, until 2020 e-GEOS is expected to provide to the Copernicus European programme – in which Leonardo plays a significant industrial role – an additional six thousand satellite images covering approximately 190 million square kilometres in the region.

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(Paris, France – August 30, 2016) CGG announced today that it has signed an agreement with GNPC Operating Services Company Ltd (GOSCO), an independent Ghanaian E&P services company, to form a joint-venture company dedicated to conducting high-end 2D, 3D and 4D marine seismic acquisition and related services in the territorial waters of the Republic of Ghana.

The primary aim of the joint-venture company, known as GOSCO Geoscience Limited (GGSL), is to make available world-class seismic vessels and state-of-the-art marine seismic acquisition technologies and services to oil and gas industry players operating in Ghana. The new joint venture will be a Ghanaian indigenous company and be based in Accra. Its creation also recognizes and supports the requirement for knowledge transfer and capacity-building in the Ghanaian E&P industry as well as the need for safe and efficient oil and gas operations undertaken to the highest international standards.

Jean-Georges Malcor, CEO, CGG, said: “We have joined forces with GOSCO to set up this joint venture as a response to recent growing industry interest in Ghana’s oil and gas potential. This move is another example of CGG’s strategy to work in partnership with local oil and gas players to benefit from their experience of working in the country while bringing them the benefit of CGG’s global expertise as a leading technology provider. We believe this joint venture will create a strong vehicle for growth in Ghana’s E&P industry.”

About CGG

CGG (www.cgg.com) is a fully integrated Geoscience company providing leading geological, geophysical and reservoir capabilities to its broad base of customers primarily from the global oil and gas industry. Through its three complementary business divisions of Equipment, Acquisition and Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir (GGR), CGG brings value across all aspects of natural resource exploration and exploitation.

CGG employs over 6,500 people around the world, all with a Passion for Geoscience and working together to deliver the best solutions to its customers.

CGG is listed on the Euronext Paris SA (ISIN: 0000120164) and the New York Stock Exchange (in the form of American Depositary Shares. NYSE: CGG).

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Paris, France – 5 October 2016. CGG announced today the start of a large broadband 3D multi-client survey in the pre-salt area of the deepwater Santos Basin. Santos VII (Saturno) is the third phase in CGG’s most ambitious pre-salt project to date, collectively known as the Santos Basin Trilogy.

The project is designed to make ultramodern seismic datasets available as quickly as possible to support each phase in the pre-salt evaluation process in anticipation of Brazil’s next pre-salt licensing round.

Saturno Multi-Client SurveyLocation map of the different CGG multi-client survey products available in the Santos Basin. Download the full size image.

Santos VII (Saturno) will cover an area of over 13,900 km2, including the highly prospective Saturno prospect, a major pre-salt opportunity with no 3D seismic coverage to date. The BroadSeis™ dataset will be acquired in two phases between September 2016 and June 2017 and processed in CGG’s Rio de Janeiro Subsurface Imaging center to provide state-of-the-art broadband images of Saturno using full-waveform inversion (FWI) technology. Fast-track products for the first phase will be available in spring 2017 and final products for both phases will be available in summer 2018.

The two other components of the Santos Basin Trilogy project are Galaxy and Constellation. Galaxy is a 3D migrated grid covering approximately 34,000 km2 extracted from CGG’s legacy Cluster and Cluster Extension surveys that offers industry players a quick regional evaluation of the Santos Basin. Constellation is a 23,750 km2 reprocessing project designed to upgrade these surveys with the latest subsurface imaging technology, including 3D deghosting, bandwidth extension and TTI FWI velocity model building, to provide detailed broadband pre-salt images. Santos VII (Saturno) will form a bridge to link these two reprocessed datasets to CGG’s existing BroadSeis surveys, Santos VI-B and Campos II, creating a unique 75,000 km2 dataset in this region.

Jean-Georges Malcor, CEO, CGG, said: “CGG already owns the industry’s largest 3D multi-client library in the highly prospective Santos Basin. With our Santos Basin Trilogy project, which has Santos VII (Saturno) as its cornerstone, CGG is again taking the lead in building powerful exploration datasets that will play a pivotal role in supporting Brazil’s future licensing rounds. We expect these survey products to provide more detailed images which will unlock the hidden potential waiting to be discovered deep within the complex Santos Basin.”

About CGG

CGG (www.cgg.com) is a fully integrated Geoscience company providing leading geological, geophysical and reservoir capabilities to its broad base of customers primarily from the global oil and gas industry. Through its three complementary business Segments of Equipment, Acquisition and Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir (GGR), CGG brings value across all aspects of natural resource exploration and exploitation.

CGG employs more than 6,500 people around the world, all with a Passion for Geoscience and working together to deliver the best solutions to its customers.

CGG is listed on the Euronext Paris SA (ISIN: 0000120164) and the New York Stock Exchange (in the form of American Depositary Shares. NYSE: CGG).

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