Category: Member News

MIRAS instrument on SMOS mission. Credits : EADS CASA Espacio

Madrid, April 12, 2005: SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission)
is an Earth observation satellite which will enhance our knowledge of
the water cycle of the planet and will allow a better understanding of
the climatic changes in order to protect the environment.

The Secretary General of Industry, Mr. Joan Trullén, the Director of
CDTI (Centro para el desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial) Mr. Maurici
Lucena, the Presidente of EADS CASA Mr. Francisco Fernández Sáinz, as
well as the Managing Director of EADS Astrium Spain Mr. Pedro Méndez,
chaired this event, presenting the structural and electrical models of
the sole instrument on board the satellite.

EADS Astrium Spain signed the contract to build the satellite’s
instrument on June of 2004 (amounting to 61 million euros, 33 of which
would go to the Spanish industry), leading a team of companies of the
Spanish space sector and other European countries. All of them
contributing with their high technological expertise to the development
of this remote sensing instrument without precedent. The project
management represents a great challenge, since it must combine a large
industrial array with the stringent exigencies of the scientific
community.

The CDTI, an organism of the Ministry of Industry and Spanish
delegation to ESA, has played a key role in the financing of this
project, the one with the most important technological and industrial
scope ever developed in Spain for the European Space Agency (ESA).

This project, as part of ESA ‘s second Earth Explorer mission of its
Living Planet Programme, will measure the soil moisture and the
salinity of the oceans by means of the radiometric instrument presented
today. These two parameters are of key interest to scientists in order
to prepare atmospheric, oceanographic and hydrological prediction
models. Salinity for instance, influences the ocean circulation, which
create weather phenomena such as El Niño or La Niña, that can cause
floods or droughts. The evaporation and filtration of water depend on
the degree of moisture in the soil and the water content of vegetation,
which are key elements in understanding the hydrological cycle and
monitoring the fresh water reserves of the planet.

The SMOS satellite will be put in orbit in March of 2007 with a Rockot launcher

The Respond GMES service element in Humanitarian Aid has been active in providing timely mapping for recent crises, including:

For UN OCHA and NGO rapid response teams, rapid production of
high resolution maps of the main area affected by the recent Sumatran
earthquake – Gunung Sitoli,
For the Word Health Organisation, the production of mapping to support
actions against the emerging marburg virus in the Cabinda region of
Angola,
For the UN Environment Programme, an assessment of the size of the post
crisis debris field in the major settlements affected by the tsumani,
For distribution via the UN Humanitarian Information Centre in Banda
Aceh, Sumatra, 1000 copies of a post crisis double sided street map /
satellite map, printed on waterproof paper and folded for easy use.

Space map of Cabinda city, Angola – at risk from the marburg virus © Repond/DLR 2005

Respond is one of the 12 ESA funded GMES service elements, primed by
Infoterra UK Ltd and including a very strong team of 21 organisations
and companies spanning the entire supply chain. It has been
active in providing mapping support for Humanitarian actions in areas
including Darfur, All the nations affected by the Tsunami, Liberia,
Myanmar and Iraq.

Information on Respond, recent products, participants and background can be found at the Respond website or by email.

NPA have been involved in the ESA EOMD ‘Earth Observation Response
to Geo-Information Market Drivers – Location Based Service Market
Segment’ project led by Comsine. Working together with the EO
industry (GAF & EUSI) and key LBS players such as M-spatial (a
mobile phone mapping solution provider) and Multimap (a leading
provider of mapping and location-based services) the project undertook
an analysis of the global LBS markets and the EO service industry, and
sought to identify opportunities in and blockages to the increased use
of EO data products in the LBS market. NPA and Multimap have developed
a visualisation web-demo for GMES Terrafirma, and continue to explore
further opportunities.

The first image from Japan’s new weather satellite, MTSAT-1R, has
now been successfully received and processed by the new ground
facilities at the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)’s Hatoyama centre,
100km north of Tokyo.

MTSAT-1R was launched on 26 February 2005 to provide regular weather
images and data over the East Asia region. The facilities to process
data and correct them for dissemination to the user community were
supplied by LogicaCMG under contract to NEC Toshiba Space Systems, Ltd.
(NTSpace).

The payload data ground segment processes the MTSAT-1R images in
real-time, applying radiometric calibration, removing minor distortions
by automatically analysing landmark features in the image, and then
disseminating the corrected images to users within a few minutes.

Mr Takashi Ohshima, Head, Office of Meteorological Satellite Planning,
of JMA said “This successful processing of images is an important
milestone in the MTSAT programme to replace the Geostationary
Meteorological Satellite (GMS) series covering the East Asia and the
Western Pacific regions.”

Mr Hideki Kimura, MTSAT-1R image data processing system manager, of
NTSpace said “The ground facilities are crucial to ensuring that
MTSAT-1R data meets the timeliness and quality requirements of the
meteorological user community. The complex real-time software required
to process the MTSAT-1R images was supplied and supported by LogicaCMG
and is significantly more sophisticated than the software for previous
series of Japanese weather satellites. The performance of the whole
MTSAT-1R system including the ground facilities is a new breakthrough
in weather satellites.”

LogicaCMG credits

Picture shows LogicaCMG landmark processing.
Note that the scale of the arrows is exaggerated compared to the MTSAT-1R image scale

NPA expert and MapAction volunteer, Nicola Capes was deployed to Sri
Lanka where she provided GIS and mapping services and advice to NGO‘s
in the field for the tsunami relief effort. Field information was
gathered with GPS for integration into the GIS to create quality maps
for Government agencies, UN (including Kofi Annan and team) and NGOs,
to show where the problems lay, what relief aid was needed and how to
get it there. MapAction are a charity providing rapid response mapping
services in disaster areas and development programmes and are part of
the GMES Respond consortium for global humanitarian mapping. Read
Nicola‘s account in GeoConnexion, March 2005 ‘Lending a helping hand’ and in ‘Spotlight’.