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NOFO (Norwegian Clean Seas Association for Operating Companies) and KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) has signed an extended agreement for satellite-based remote sensing, on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, for detection of acute pollution from petroleum activity.

This agreement represents a solid boost for the detection of oil spills on the Norwegian shelf, enabling rapid deployment of an oil recovery operation by having all fields in production monitored daily by satellite.

KSAT has delivered its satellite-based oil spill detection service to the industry, through NOFO, since 2005. The service is based on oil spill detection using radar satellites. The images are downloaded at KSATs ground stations and analyzed by experts in Tromsø. The results are then delivered quickly to NOFO, which is then responsible for forwarding the results to the operating companies.

From 1.October 2016, the frequency of this service has increased significantly. The purpose of the new agreement is to ensure early detection and early warning of acute oil spills. Operators on the Norwegian shelf applied to the Norwegian Environment Agency for revision of the terms on remote sensing, and the use of satellites has been selected as the primary detection tool for detection of possible oil spills from petroleum activities on the Norwegian shelf. This technology has proven to be the most operationally, and cost effective method, for monitoring large areas of sea, and each field is now being monitored on a daily basis.

Over the course of many years of cooperation, KSAT, together with NOFO, has established a simple and cost-effective remote sensing system for the Norwegian shelf. KSAT is responsible for planning, ordering, acquisition, and analysis of the satellite data, and then reporting the results to NOFO, in addition to a 24/7 emergency support service. Radar Satellite imagery can cover such large areas that several fields are covered in the same image, which leads to cost savings for the operators, particularly when they team up for the service under the collaborative umbrella that NOFO provides.

NOFO has been working with KSAT more than ten years on the use of satellites for remote sensing. The use of this service is now increasing significantly and that our members put NOFO to manage this is a vote of confidence that we are looking forward to grasp and live up to, “says Leif J Kvamme, CEO of NOFO.

“It is very gratifying that the Environmental Directorate and the Norwegian Operating Companies again recognize satellite technology as the preferred tool for effective monitoring of the Norwegian continental shelf. The technology has been proven through many years of operational delivery and this increase in frequency will have a significant impact on Norwegian oil spill preparedness in the years to come. It could also have a positive impact beyond national borders by serving as an example of Best Practice when countries look to Norway as an example for the establishment of their own national requirements for oil spill detection monitoring, “says KSAT CEO, Rolf Skatteboe.

For further information, please contact:

Marte Indregard, VP of Energy, Environment and Security, KSAT, Tel: +47 48196720.
Leif J. Kvamme, CEO, NOFO, Tel + 47 484 02 333

  • NOFO manages and coordinates the oil spill response on behalf of the operators on the Norwegian shelf. Through research and development, training and exercises NOFO contributes a continuous improvement of methods, equipment, technology and operations within its area of responsibility
  • KSAT is the world’s leading commercial satellite center and is owned 50% by Kongsberg Gruppen (KONGSBERG) and 50% by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries via the company Space Norway. KSAT has a unique global ground network for reception of satellite data and has specialized since 20 years in satellite based near real-time monitoring services from its headquarters in Tromsø.

• Peru’s first satellite image reveals Cuajone, a large copper mine in the south of the country
• Latin America’s most powerful satellite gives 70 cm resolution

The PerúSAT-1 satellite, designed and built by Airbus Defence and Space, the world’s second largest space company, has delivered its first images after its successful launch on 16 September from Kourou.

“We constructed PerúSAT-1 in a record time of less than 24 months and now, after having completed the orbital maneuvers to reach its operational orbit at an altitude of 695 km, it has delivered its first image for the Peruvian Space Agency (CONIDA). I would like to thank all the teams for their efforts in achieving this latest milestone,” said Nicolas Chamussy, Head of Space Systems.

Airbus Defence and Space is the world’s leading exporter of Earth observation satellites, and PerúSAT-1 is based on the highly flexible, compact AstroBus-S platform featuring a state-of-the-art silicon carbide optical instrument system with 70 cm resolution. It will collect images for use in agriculture, urban planning, border control and drug trafficking, and will support the management of humanitarian aid and the evaluation of natural disasters, among other applications.

From now until the end of the year, exhaustive in-orbit tests will be carried out from the CNOIS control centre (Centro Nacional de Operaciones de Imágenes Satelitales) built by Airbus Defence and Space, in Pucusana, south of Lima to ensure that all subsystems are operating properly. PerúSAT-1 satellite system will then be commissioned and handed over to the fully trained Peruvian engineers and technicians of the customer CONIDA.

Constructed in a record time of less than 24 months, PerúSAT-1 is currently the most powerful Earth observation satellite in the Latin American region. The result of a bilateral agreement between Peru and France, PerúSAT-1 gives Peru a sovereign capability and will play a key role in bringing the benefits of space to its society.

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About Airbus Defence and Space

Airbus Defence and Space, a division of Airbus Group, is Europe’s number one defence and space enterprise and the second largest space business worldwide. Its activities include space, military aircraft and related systems and services. It employs more than 38,000 people and in 2015 generated revenues of over 13 billion Euros.

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Posted by Alan Boyle on Tuesday, October 4, 2016. Google has announced the release of Landsat and Sentinel-2 data on the Google Cloud.

How do you channel a flood of almost 5 million images into useful applications? Google Cloud is doing it with more than 30 years’ worth of satellite imagery from the Landsat and Sentinel-2 missions, for free.

Satellite views have long been part of Google’s global mapping operation, of course. But putting them on the cloud is a different matter.

One of the newly added data sets draws upon the complete catalog of pictures from Landsat 4, 5, 7 and 8, amounting to 1.3 petabytes of data that go back to 1984. The other data set takes advantage of more than 430 terabytes’ worth of multispectral imaging from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite, which is part of the Copernicus program to monitor global environmental indicators.

The Landsat database keeps track of 4 million scenes, while the Sentinel-2 set offers 970,000 images. More pictures are being added daily.

When satellite images become available via the cloud, customers who focus on geospatial analysis don’t have to worry about downloading and organizing 1.7 quadrillion bytes of data on their own. “In a Google blog posting“https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/powering-geospatial-analysis-public-geo-datasets-now-on-Google-Cloud.html, Descartes Labs CEO Mark Johnson explained how the shift to the cloud makes the job of predicting crop yields easier.

“To make accurate machine-learning models of major crops, we needed decades of satellite imagery from the entire globe,” Johnson said. “Thanks to Google Earth Engine hosting the entire Landsat archive publicly on Google Cloud, we can focus on algorithms instead of worrying about collecting petabytes of data. Earth observation will continue to improve with every new satellite launch, and so will our ability to forecast global food supply.”

Another venture that’s taking advantage of Google’s cloud-based satellite data is Spaceknow, which analyzes changes over time to track economic trends. Spaceknow’s algorithms digest billions of observations from Landsat satellites to determine, for example, the ups and downs of Chinese manufacturing activity.

In today’s posting, the project manager for Google Earth Engine, Peter Birch, says there’s likely to be more to come. “With dozens of public satellites in orbit and many more scheduled over the next decade, the size and complexity of geospatial imagery continues to grow,” Birch says.

There’s also likely to be more competition in the cloud as well: Amazon Web Services has its own repository of free imagery from Landsat and other Earth-watching satellites, while Microsoft’s Azure platform has been used to process MODIS satellite imagery and tease out hydrological trends.

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On the 6th of October 2016, the European Commission entrusted SatCen with the operations of the Copernicus services in Support to EU External Action (SEA) with the signature of a Delegation Agreement by Lowri EVANS, Director-General DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW) and Pascal Legai, SatCen Director.

SEA together with Border Surveillance and Maritime Surveillance is one of the three pillars of the security dimension of Copernicus, the EU Earth Observation programme.

In the framework of this agreement, SEA will provide the External Action user community – including CFSP/CSDP and its Missions and Operations – with a portfolio of services ranging from Reference Mapping to Activity Reports, in full compliance with SatCen governance. Since 2006, SatCen has been involved in the preparation of those services through activities funded by EU Framework Programmes (FP6, FP7), notably the LIMES, G-MOSAIC, BRIDGES and G-NEXT projects. In particular, G-NEXT implemented the pre-operational phase of the service and BRIDGES addressed its governance.

In implementing the service, SatCen will work in cooperation and build up synergies with the service operators for the two other components of the Copernicus Security Service, already put in place from the end of 2015, respectively with Frontex, acting as service operator for the border surveillance, and with “EMSA:“http://www.emsa.europa.eu/, implementing the maritime surveillance component.


Credits: SatCen/European Commission

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(Neustrelitz, Germany October 4, 2016) This year marks the 20th anniversary of signing an agreement with Antrix, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), to receive and distribute Indian EO satellite data on an exclusive basis for European customers.

As a consequence of this contract, GAF also entered into a long term cooperation and service agreement with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) regarding the provision, by the latter, of downlink capabilities at its ground station in Neustrelitz. In order to handle the archiving and distribution of the data, GAF formed the wholly-owned subsidiary Euromap and based it on the DLR campus in Neustrelitz. This has resulted in 20 years of close cooperation with DLR and an important presence at Neustrelitz, consisting of a permanent staff that currently numbers 25 scientists and technicians. Euromap has now become a GAF branch, with offices on the DLR campus and in central Neustrelitz.

The creation of this business, which was a strategically important venture that was also initially associated with risks, has not only created a true European outreach but has also fostered links between GAF and DLR, and has had a tremendous positive impact on the economic development of GAF.

In the field of EO data distribution, GAF can be regarded as Antrix’s only continuously active international partner for the last 20 years. So far, the partnership includes six satellite missions, and thanks to both the ambitious Indian EO programme and the common understanding reached between Antrix and GAF, the partnership is set to be expanded further.

During the last 20 years, GAF has acquired and archived more than 1.4 million image scenes covering almost 40 billion square kilometres with medium, high or very-high resolution raw IRS optical satellite data. GAF has provided data products and related services to, for example, the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) for the Copernicus programme, and has developed the Euro-Maps 3D Digital Surface Model (DSM) product with 5 m post spacing.

“The access to Indian data is a core element in GAF’s and the Telespazio Group’s policy of securing preferential access to EO data sources that enable the development of innovative value added products, while still acting as a truly independent data broker for all the important data providers in the market,” says Peter Volk, CEO of GAF.

About DLR: www.dlr.de/eoc/
The German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) is an institute of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Together with the centre’s Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF), it forms DLR’s Earth Observation Center (EOC), which coordinates DLR’s activities relating to Earth observation data from satellites and aircraft. DFD focuses on the reception, archiving, distribution and utilisation of data.
In addition to applied research, DFD has expertise in the development and operation of satellite ground systems.

About Antrix: www.antrix.gov.in/
Antrix Corporation Limited (Antrix) is a wholly owned Government of India Company under the administrative control of the Department of Space (DOS). Antrix is the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Antrix promotes and commercially markets the products and services emanating from the Indian Space Programme.

About GAF AG: www.gaf.de
Founded in 1985 by Dr. Rupert Haydn, the Agrar- und Hydrotechnik (AHT) GmbH, and the Wittelsbacher Bavarian Trust Fund, GAF has developed into a leading geo-information company. GAF has earned an international reputation as a skilled provider of data, products and services in the fields of geo-information, spatial IT and consulting for private and public clients. As a result of a merger with its former subsidiary Euromap GmbH, GAF has become the exclusive supplier in Europe of optical Indian Remote Sensing data from several satellites. The company’s archives contain systematic coverage of Europe and northern Africa from 1996 and onwards, and include raw satellite data from the high and medium resolution IRS missions IRS‑1C, IRS-1D, Resourcesat-1, Resourcesat-2 and Cartosat-1. GAF is also specialised in the production of orthoimage mosaics and digital elevation models from various high and very-high resolution satellite missions. For more than 13 years, GAF is part of the Telespazio Group, which belongs to Leonardo and Thales, two major European technology firms.

For more information, please contact:
GAF AG
Daniela Miller
Arnulfstr. 199
80634 Munich
Tel: +49 89 1215 28-0
Fax: +49 89 1215 28-79
info@gaf.de

Antrix Corporation Limited
Antariksh Bhavan Campus
Near New BEL Road
Bangalore-560 094
India
Tel: +91 80 2217 8338
remotesensing@antrix.gov.in

German Aerospace Center
German Remote Sensing Data Center
Department: National Ground Segment
Tel: +49 3981 480 111
Holger.Maass@dlr.de

Airbus Defence and Space launched its latest development in satellite imagery acquisition and distribution, One Tasking. Representing a major step change, One Tasking offers customers the most intuitive and cost-effective way to rapidly task an Airbus Defence and Space’s satellite – all from the comfort of their own desk.

The new One Tasking service provides 24/7/365 access to Airbus Defence and Space’s high-resolution and wide-swath satellite sensors. A team of dedicated in-house experts ensures that any requested area is captured on time and in line with the customer’s requirements.

30 years ago, Airbus Defence and Space was the first to offer bespoke satellite tasking services – helping to support a variety of unique challenges ranging from map updates, emergency response and land use analysis to mission planning and long-term asset monitoring. Today, with One Tasking, Airbus Defence and Space is resetting the bar once again, with a capability to only deliver the very best results. This commitment to customer centric flexibility goes far beyond the current “best effort” approach, where cloud cover and other environmental factors can too often reduce the extractable value from the resulting imagery.

“We wanted to create a product which was unlike anything already on the market and truly focused on the customer and their needs. To achieve this we asked our customers to challenge us. The result was a clear desire to eliminate some of the risk and simplify the longwinded ordering-process clients associated with tasking satellites” said Bernhard Brenner, Head of Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space. “With One Tasking, those objectives have been met and in many areas exceeded, especially with our commitment to only deliver the very best results, which we believe is a real game changer.”

A variety of tailored One Tasking solutions are also available to meet specific industry needs and requirements:

· OneDay: Risk-free imagery acquisition for a specific day
Weather forecast will be sent 24 hours before the acquisition date, enabling customers to confirm, postpone or even cancel a tasking request, at no cost.
· OneNow: Immediate and useful imagery in an instant.
Satellites are tasked to deliver valuable insights in the shortest possible timeframe.
· OnePlan: Qualified coverage within an agreed timeframe
The qualified coverage is agreed and delivered according to customer selected timeframes and dates to meet specific project milestones.
· OneSeries: Repeat coverage
Imagery is acquired and delivered on a regular basis to monitor long-term changes or highly dynamic situations.

Contacts:
Fabienne GRAZZINI + 33 5 62 19 41 19
fabienne.grazzini@airbus.com

Every minute of every day, ocean-monitoring Satellites produce data crucial to aiding understanding of the weather, climate and environment.
Now EUMETSAT, the European OrganISAtion for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, is offering a free, five-week massive open online course (MOOC) for anyone curious to know more about how satellites contribute to our understanding of the oceans.

The course, “Monitoring the Oceans from Space”, starts on 24 October and is timed to coincide with the coming on stream of satellite data and products from the Sentinel-3A satellite.

Sentinel-3A was Launched in February and is part of the EU’s flagship Copernicus Programme for monitoring the environment from space. The MOOC is funded by the EU through the Copernicus programme.

“The course will give people a whole new perspective on the world,” Dr Hayley Evers-King, Marine Earth Observation Scientist of Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and one of the MOOC’s presenters, said.

“Satellite observations provide a completely different way of looking how the world works, how things are interconnected.

“Satellite observations provide a completely different way of looking how the world works, how things are interconnected”

“Oceans are a vast proportion of the planet – 70 per cent of the Earth is water. Everybody knows that but, as we ourselves only experience a small part of the Earth at any one time, it is quite difficult for us to comprehend how things are connected globally. With satellites, you can see the interconnections (and) the ocean’s importance in terms of food, the air we breathe, the weather and climate.”

Hayley said she thought many people were unaware of the accessibility of satellite data.

EUMETSAT Training Manager Dr Mark Higgins who, along with physicist, oceanographer and BBC science presenter Dr Helen Czerski from University College London, also is a presenter for the MOOC, said the course brought together recognised experts from around Europe and further afield.

“If you are curious about how we know what we know about the oceans, then this course is an opportunity to come and play with the data,” Mark said.

“The course shows how much care we take over making sure the satellite data are correct, making sure the data are always available to downstream users and the sheer amount of data that is available.”

MOOCThat amount of information is set to vastly increase when Sentinel-3’s data is added to the mix.

EUMETSAT is responsible for the day to day operations of Sentinel-3 and for processing and dISSeminating its marine data stream. One of the main users of the data is the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, where experts interpret and make available data relating to four key application areas: marine resources, maritime safety, coastal and marine environment and climate monitoring.

The MOOC also explores this relationship.

Registrations (https://www.futurelearn.com/courSES/oceans-from-space) for the MOOC are now open.
About the MOOC

The Monitoring the Oceans From Space MOOC is funded by the EU’s Copernicus Programme.

  • The MOOC was developed by Imperative Space in partnership with Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the National Oceanography Centre (Southampton), CLS France and NASA JPL.
  • It will run for three hours per week and provide an interactive learning environment through entertaining lecture videos with leading scientists, tutorials, quizzes and learning apps.
  • The MOOC will explain how to access and use marine Earth observation data and information from Copernicus/EUMETSAT missions and the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service.

Link Open learning course shows how satellites aid understanding of the oceans

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(October 2016) Planetek Italia is pleased to announce that The Wroclaw Institute, GeoSolutions Consulting Inc. and Gjeo-Vjosa sh.p.k. been appointed as Authorized Partners for the reselling of the Earth monitoring services offered by its cloud platform, Rheticus®.

Contracts grants to Authorized Partners the exclusive right to sell Rheticus® satellite processing services to the customers located in their respective countries and markets. Services available through the Rheticus® platform allow the users to monitor the Earth surface evolution. It includes monitoring of earth crust subsidence, urban dynamics, forest fires hazards, costal seawater quality as well as many more in the near future.

The Planetek Italia CEO, Mr Giovanni Sylos Labini added:

“We are excited to cooperate with our international partners. Rheticus® will now support professionals and decision makers in a growing number of countries, relying on the sound professional support of our partners. Born and strengthened under the Hexagon Geospatial network, these cooperations open new opportunities to develop and deliver cutting-edge solutions to our markets. Through the integration of the Rheticus® monitoring services in Hexagon Geospatial Smart M.Apps, we can offer insightful analytics and dynamic maps to users worldwide.”

Rheticus® is a cloud-based geoinformation service platform, designed to automatically process satellite data and other data sources. It delivers fresh and accurate data and information for monitoring of the earth’s surface evolution. Rheticus® platform is a perfect solution for organizations dealing in their operations with natural environment concerns like mining, heavy industry, roads, rail utility construction and operations, environmental and forestry agencies and local government, etc.

To know more about Rheticus® Authorized Partners

The Wroclaw Institute in Poland http://www.wizipisi.pl
GeoSolutions Consulting Inc. in Central America http://geosolutionsconsulting.com/
Gjeo-Vjosa sh.p.k. in Albania http://www.gjeovjosa.com/

Press Release From: European Space Agency
Posted: Thursday, October 6, 2016

In an era of profound digital transformation, business leaders and IT experts are convening at ESA’s mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, today for the first SAP Digital Leaders’ Summit.

Under the theme “Gain the competitive edge in a disruptive world”, the summit provides an opportunity for European chief executive officers and future digital leaders to exchange ideas on next-generation business and technology landscapes.

Topics including strategy in the digital age and how outer space impacts digital society, politics and economy are being addressed.

In February, SAP and ESA signed a letter of intent to develop innovative approaches for the quick and efficient processing of large amounts of Earth observation data through access to real-time platforms.

The amount of data from ESA satellites including the Sentinels for Europe’s Copernicus programme – controlled by teams at the European Space Operations Centre where today’s event is being held– is a challenge for traditional data processing and handling.

Through the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, quick and efficient processing of vast amounts of Earth observation data is possible, and opens access to many new applications and users working with the SAP cloud solutions.

Driven by the SAP Center for Digital Leadership, SAP intends to develop further solutions and technologies based on elastic cloud-platforms such as SAP HANA Spatial and Earth observation data from ESA. The results are planned to become reality in new services, showcase, and new fields of applications for SAP and ESA customers. Entrepreneurs, partners and SAP customers around the world will be able to build their businesses on top of SAP technology while leveraging geospatial information.

Today’s summit is an important step in the ESA–SAP collaboration, which also foresees joint promotional activities for start-up companies and small- and medium-sized enterprises. A session will be devoted to digital start-up innovation, where winners from ESA’s App Camps and the Copernicus Masters will present their ideas, together with teams from the SAP HANA Startup Focus Programme.

“More and more applications will be platform-based in the future. To reach the users it is important that data providers and platform operators join forces. This is the idea behind the strategic partnership between ESA and SAP,” said Volker Liebig, former Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes.

“From the ESA side, we bring the vast amount of information coming from ESA’s scientific satellite missions as well as the data delivered by the European Copernicus satellites. Together with SAP we expect to gain access to new user groups and pave the way for new satellite-based applications.”

Dr Carsten Linz, Business Development Officer and Global Head of SAP’s Center for Digital Leadership, said: “Smart data is the new golden nugget in the digital age. However, data alone is not knowledge. Platform-based innovation makes it easier than ever to create a winning digital strategy where data-driven insight and action are true, smart assets.

“Today’s summit demonstrates concrete digital innovation showcases from the SAP-ESA partnership as well as joint achievements in building a digital space ecosystem with start-up companies.

“The combination of the SAP HANA Spatial platform with ESA’s geospatial information opens a bright future for space-related applications, such as smart farming and smart cities which bring businesses the competitive edge and improve peoples’ lives.”

The “Internationalisation of European EO companies” workshop will be held at DG GROW, on 22 November 2016. The event belongs to the “Copernicus User Forum Industry Workshop” series.

The European Commission (EC) is organising the “Internationalisation of European Earth Observation companies” workshop on 22 November 2016 at the Breydel building of DG GROW. The workshop will gather European EO companies, representatives of the EO industry, as well as interested User Forum members.

The main objectives are to:

  • Discuss the opportunities, challenges and critical needs of European EO companies, in particular SMEs, to expand their business outside the EU
  • Provide information on dedicated tools and initiatives available in support to internationalisation
  • Examine EO companies’ specific and/or additional expectations with respect to internationalisation and EU support to it

REGISTRATIONS TO THE WORKSHOP ARE NOW OPEN. Please register here