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Friedrichshafen, 14 June 2017 – Designed to operate for five years, Airbus’s Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite TerraSAR-X has achieved ten years of flawless operations in orbit providing high-resolution radar images in all weather conditions 24 hours a day.

Satellite image of Las Vegas, USA by TerraSAR-X © DLR e.V. 2016, Distribution Airbus DS Geo GmbH

Developed and constructed by Airbus Defence and Space teams from Friedrichshafen for the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the satellite orbits at a height of 514 km and provides radar imagery to a wide variety of scientific and commercial users.

“TerraSAR-X has not only achieved double its service life, having orbited the Earth 55,459 times and travelled 2.4 billion kilometres, all while boasting 99.9 percent availability, it has also delivered an outstanding performance”, said Eckard Settelmeyer, Head of Earth Observation, Navigation and Science at Airbus in Germany. “TerraSAR-X is in such a good condition that a current assessment indicates it can be operated for a few more years in space until a follow-on system is in place.”

“TerraSAR-X features a unique geometric accuracy,” said François Lombard, Head of the Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space. “With six imaging modes, it offers flexible coverage and resolutions ranging from 0.25m to 40m, and answers the needs of a wide range of domains, like engineering companies to ensure the safe operation of large construction projects, oil and gas enterprises to monitor their production, or Intelligence and Security agencies for targeted surveillance and detailed change detection.”

Since the launch of its almost identical twin TanDEM-X in 2010, both satellites have been flying in formation with the distance between them only a few hundred metres. They have acquired a huge amount of data which provides the basis for the new standard of global elevation models, WorldDEM, covering the entire Earth’s.

TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X offer high acquisition frequency, regardless of area of interest or weather conditions, which is crucial for natural or man-made disasters, where reactive mapping is needed to support rescue planning.

Following the launch of the PAZ satellite at the end of this year on the same orbit, the three satellites will be operated in a constellation to deliver even more optimized revisit time, increased coverage and improved services.

Airbus Defence and Space is working on the next generation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites as a follow-on mission to TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X from 2022.

Visit the TerraSAR-X image gallery

The COSMO-SkyMed constellation is one of the most innovative Earth Observation programmes with four identical SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites that “watch” the Earth day and night, under any atmospheric condition, thanks to the high-resolution X-band radars.

Funded by ASI (the Italian Space Agency), the Italian Ministry of Defence and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Scientific Research, the constellation was realised in stages. The first satellite was launched ten years ago on June 7, 2007, followed by the second in December 2007, the third in October 2008 and the fourth in November 2010.

In its first decade of service, COSMO-SkyMed has captured over one million radar scenes worldwide, by monitoring, for example, UNESCO World Heritage sites and generating data that is vital to understanding the phenomena that impact our Planet: assessing damage following natural disasters, such as earthquakes, landslides, and flooding; monitoring critical infrastructure, tracking the movement of glaciers, and monitoring illegal activities, such as oil spills and the trafficking of goods or people.

The Second Generation

Italian industry is now developing COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG), which foresees the launch of a first satellite in 2018 and a second one in 2019. The two new satellites of the constellation represent the top tier in radar observation from Space, in terms of precision, features and image quality.

Leonardo’s contribution

Leonardo’s Space sector has contributed decisively to the realisation of the COSMO-SkyMed system: four radar satellites realised by Thales Alenia Space Italia (Thales/Leonardo) and a ground system built by Telespazio (Leonardo/Thales) that ensures the control of the constellation, programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of the images to civil and military end-users in all mission phases.

A dual use programme

COSMO-SkyMed was conceived for dual purposes, a programme designed for both civil applications (environmental monitoring, civil protection, Oil & Gas) as well as military ones. The general features enable interoperability with other systems and use in the context of international agreements. In particular, COSMO-SkyMed is able to meet the stringent operational requirements of Copernicus , the European Earth Observation programme.

Satellite Data for Emergency Support

Following the devastating earthquakes that hit vast areas of Central Italy last year, COSMO-SkyMed’s satellite technology confirmed the vital role they are able play in emergency support, providing satellite data that help assess the extent of the damage and enable the monitoring of events, thanks to the comparison of images captured before and after.

The processing of COSMO-SkyMed’s images proved fundamental in supporting the emergency rescue services of past global natural disasters, such as the earthquakes that struck China in 2008, L’Aquila (Italy) in 2009, Haiti in 2010, the tsunami in Japan in 2011, and the typhoon that hit the Philippines in 2013.

A New Integrated Map

Thanks to the use of special algorithms capable of highlighting variations even as small as just a few centimetres, the processing of images from the COSMO-SkyMed satellites are invaluable and unique sources of information. The development of these algorithms enabled the processing of a new type of image called a damage proxy map. This map is an experimental example of the fusion of images from optical space sensors, radar sensors and data, such as that of the COSMO-SkyMed satellites, and from geolocalised social media content. It is an innovative approach that enhances the information content of radar data by combining it with the more immediate, visual content of optical images. Thus, it is the first example of the evolution of geospatial applications combined with Information Technology and the Big Data world.

COSMO-SkyMed System’s Operational Centres
The COSMO-SkyMed system, with its capabilities of control, programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of images consists of a network of operational centres spread throughout Italy and abroad:

  • The Fucino Space Centre (Telespazio) is responsible for the control and management of COSMO-SkyMed and for mission planning and coordination.
  • The Matera Space Centre (e-GEOS) is one of the three Core Ground Segment stations of Copernicus. It coordinates the programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of the products to the end-user.
  • The Centro Interforze di Telerilevamento Satellitare (the Joint Force Centre of Satellite Remote Sensing) (Defence Administration) coordinates the programming, acquisition, processing and delivery of the products to Defence end-users.
  • The Cordoba Station (Argentina) and the Kiruna Station (Sweden) form the network of telemetry, command, control and data acquisition of the COSMO-SkyMed constellation, together with the stations on Italian soil (Fucino, Matera and Pratica di Mare).
    In addition, there is the Rome Emergency Mapping Centre (e-GEOS) that coordinates emergency-related activities.

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Toulouse, 31 May 2017 – Airbus Defence and Space will provide SpaceKnow, a leading provider of satellite imagery analysis, with access to its One Atlas optical satellite imagery basemap streaming service.

Objective of the respective agreement is to allow online access to Pléiades and SPOT satellite imagery, and support the development of new analytics applications and services across a wide range of markets, such as finance, defence and construction.

SpaceKnow provides their customers with valuable information from analysis of satellite imagery, including multiple change detection and object tracking products. One of their most popular products, the China Satellite Manufacturing Index, measures levels of manufacturing activity by monitoring over 6,000 industrial facilities across China with thousands of satellite images.

As part of this agreement, SpaceKnow will access One Atlas via Airbus’ newest Application Programming Interface, “View API”. One Atlas is a satellite image basemap which covers the entire Earth with professional grade imagery. Available online 24/7 and refreshed regularly so that no data is older than 12 months, One Atlas provides customers with easy access to cost effective, high-quality and homogeneous imagery.

François Lombard, Head of the Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space, said: “We are excited to see One Atlas become a core layer for SpaceKnow’s analytics tools, in which up-to-date and detailed Pléiades and SPOT satellite imagery will provide sharp, contextual and reliable data, to help drive analytical information.”

“The introduction of One Atlas optical satellite imagery into our suite of visual analytics applications provides SpaceKnow clients and partners with powerful new capabilities, and enables users across industries to make important decisions with an even greater degree of confidence,” said SpaceKnow CEO and Co-Founder Pavel Machalek. “We’re proud to partner with Airbus and to significantly enhance our products with the robust Airbus dataset,” Machalek added.

To learn more about One Atlas and how to gain easy access to fresh satellite imagery, please visit http://www.intelligence-airbusds.com/one-atlas/

(May 2017) Pedro Gonçalves on how EGI’s Federated Cloud supports Terradue’s operations for the Geohazards Exploitation Platform.

Earth observations from satellites produce vast amounts of data. In particular, the new Copernicus Sentinel missions are playing an increasingly important role as a reliable high-quality and free open data source for scientific, public sector and commercial activities.

ICT solutions can facilitate the handling of these large volumes of data and are nowadays modifying the expectations that organisations have on new service development and on support to Earth Observation (EO) data exploitation. Their goal is more and more to develop capacities to create added value, involving SLAs and accountability with business partners for the data products and services they bring in this process.

The Terradue Cloud Platform is addressing this topic with solutions to transfer EO processing algorithms to cloud infrastructures. The platform also provides services to optimise the connectivity of the data centres with more integrated discovery and processing methods. For example, Terradue provides the engineering and operational support for the Geohazards Exploitation Platform), an ESA-funded partnership also involving private companies (TRE-ALTAMIRA), research centres (CNR IREA, CNRS ENS, CNRS EOST and INGV) and space agency (DLR EOC).

GEP and EGI

GEP offers a rich set of ready to use EO data processing services for the analysis and monitoring of earthquake, volcanoes and landslides. The platform federates the geohazards community by creating a workplace with cloud-based models of collaboration, where data providers, users and technology providers join forces to produce scientific and commercial exploitable results.

EGI supports Terradue with matchmaking services between ICT consumers and the appropriate provider(s) across the EGI Federation and beyond. The computing and storage resources from the ReCaS Bari and BELNET-BEGRID centres are used by Terradue to help the global scale systematic production of the DLR InSAR Browse Medium-Resolution Service on the GEP. With this service, the platform produces interferograms to show where earthquakes are most likely to impact society.

Currently in a ramp-up phase, which began in September 2016 covering 20% of the world seismic mask, GEP is planned to reach its peak of 50% by the 2nd quarter of 2017 with a production rate of about 320 Sentinel-1 scenes (160 interferometric pairs) per day. This production is fully ran on EGI Federated Cloud resources .

The Service level agreements (SLAs) established with EGI Foundation enabled Terradue to extend the hybrid cloud infrastructure using a new OpenNebula OCCI driver, and provided a reliable Cloud infrastructure for the ESA Thematic Exploitation Platforms users.

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(Guildford, UK, May 2017) Earth-i, the innovative British distributor of Earth Observation imagery and services, has teamed up with Harwell-based WeatherSafe – leaders in the application of big data analytics to meet agricultural challenges – to support the coffee farmers of Burundi through Earth-i’s ACCORD programme.

ACCORD combines very high resolution satellite imagery with crop analysis to provide stakeholders with critical insights on key coffee farming decisions to improve crop quality , thereby supporting sustainable growth for coffee farmers large and small.

A staggering thirty percent of Burundi’s population depends upon coffee production as their primary source of income. So any increase in the yield and quality of this crop will have a marked effect upon the nation’s GDP and help drive economic development throughout the country.

In partnership with the World Bank and the International Development Fund, the Government of Burundi has launched a programme for the Productivity and Development of Agricultural Markets (PRODEMA), which aims to “improve food security through increased production and improved market access for agricultural and livestock products important for domestic consumption”.

To assist PRODEMA in meeting the goals of its coffee sector support project, Earth-i and WeatherSafe will fulfil a number of vital functions. These include combining satellite imagery – such as that provided by the British built DMC3 satellites – with algorithms to automatically identify coffee plantation plots from satellite imagery, as well as extracting key features such as roads and coffee washing stations and provide an estimation of the number of trees.

Earth-i and WeatherSafe will conduct analysis to estimate the yields of those farms. All of this information will be provided through a geo-referenced database.

Local ground surveys will validate the results, which are expected to provide real insights to the Burundi coffee industry, with the stated aim of helping to improve the competitiveness of the coffee industry in Burundi.

Commenting on the project award, CEO of Earth-i Richard Blain said; “We are delighted to have been awarded this important project with our partners at WeatherSafe. The combination of our technologies will provide a powerful new capability to the coffee farmers in Burundi, and a perfect example of how data from space can make a real difference to people’s lives”.

Earth-i: (www.earthi.space) is a British company dedicated to facilitating the distribution of data from the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation. As the prime master distributor appointed by 21AT, Earth-i provides a portal for data users wishing to take advantage of the advanced data and services made possible by this uniquely capable Earth Observation satellite constellation.
Earth-i is co-located on the Surrey Research Park in the UK with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, the manufacturer of the DMC3/TripleSat constellation. www.earthi.space www.sstl.co.uk

Toulouse, 24 May 2017 – Airbus Defence and Space has signed a 4-year contract with Scanex , the Russian Earth observation company, for access to optical satellite imagery via the One Atlas platform, covering 180 million km² throughout the contract.

Yandex , one of the largest internet companies in Europe, and operating Russia’s most popular search engine, will directly benefit from this agreement. Yandex feeds its Yandex.Maps portal by purchasing satellite imagery from Scanex.

The 180 million km² of One Atlas data will be integrated into Yandex.Maps, ensuring access to fresh SPOT satellites 1.5m resolution images on a global scale, and Pléiades satellite 0.5m resolution product over cities. One Atlas is a satellite image basemap which covers the earth landmasses with professional grade imagery. Available online 24/7 and refreshed within a 12-month period, One Atlas provides customers with easy access to cost effective, high-quality and homogeneous imagery. This streamed basemap facilitates the sharing of data across teams or partner organisations, with no compromise on security or privacy.

“Yandex.Maps proposes detailed maps of most countries, and satellite layer,” said Andrey Strelkov, Yandex’s head of geolocation products. “Access to the up-to-date, high-quality images of the One Atlas platform will help us to regularly improve our geo-services.”

Valery Barinberg, Scanex General Director, said: “This new agreement reinforces the long-term collaboration between our companies and brings together two organizations, Airbus and Yandex, well known for delivering quality content, expertise and innovation to the world. It was a group effort and we are excited to be a part of this team.”

“We are very happy to sign this One Atlas contract with Scanex, longterm and faithful partner, who has always trusted in our products and innovations”, said François Lombard, Head of Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space.

(24 May 2017) East View Geospatial is teaming with Planet and the World Bank to identify unplanned urbanization in specific developing areas using satellite imagery.

Starting in mid-2017, East View Geospatial will begin calculating and detecting change to the Floor Space Index (FSI) for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with data provided by partner organization Planet. Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with a roughly 4.5 percent average annual population increase from 2002 to 2015.

East View Geospatial analysts will enter Planet imagery and World Bank data into a proprietary automation system that will analyze multiple indicators, including infrastructure investments and residence characteristics, to determine if urbanization is planned or unplanned. Unplanned urbanization is, by definition, sudden and unexpected, leading to massive population surges that without proper infrastructure can cause adverse health effects, massive inconvenience and, potentially, social disorder.

“We are excited to team with Planet and the World Bank on this important humanitarian project,” said Mark Knapp, East View Geospatial product development manager. “Planet imagery coupled with our change-detection algorithms and big data analytics promise to revolutionize how the World Bank addresses development issues across the globe.”


East View Geospatial calculates the Floor Space Index for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, using Planet satellite imagery and proprietary, scalable workflows.

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(Munich, 25 April 2017) A European consortium headed by GAF AG has been awarded a contract by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to implement the geographic extension (2012) and complete update (2018) of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service’s Riparian Zones dataset. The project team consists of four experienced European service providers: GAF (Germany), e-Geos (Italy), GeoVille (Austria) and Indra (Spain). The consortium has signed a €4.2 million framework service contract with the EEA.

As part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service’s Local Component, the consortium will provide mapping and consultancy services to EEA, delivering a consistent spatial extension and thematic update (for the reference year 2018) of the very-high resolution characterisation of riparian zones for most of Europe, including Turkey (i.e. the 39 EEA member and cooperating countries). Based on optical satellite imagery with very high spatial resolution, the consortium will produce the following, complementary riparian data layers:

  • Very-high-resolution land cover/land use in a riparian buffer zone for the reference year 2012, extending the existing riparian zones product further upstream by adding all Strahler level 2 rivers;
  • Very-high-resolution land cover/land use update of the entire pan-European riparian zones coverage of Strahler level 2-9 rivers for the reference year 2018.

Riparian zones are among the most sensitive ecosystem and biodiversity hotspots in Europe. The extended and updated dataset will assist with the systematic assessment and monitoring of related freshwater ecosystems and riverine habitats. It will specifically provide support to the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 and the related Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) as well as the associated Green Infrastructure and Restoration objectives, the Habitats and Birds Directives, the Water Framework Directive and the European Floods Directive.

Markus Probeck – GAF’s programme manager for Copernicus services – remarks: “By also adding small river categories, this initiative will significantly increase the added value of the EEA’s unique riparian zones dataset across Europe. GAF and its partners are very pleased to be entrusted with this latest Copernicus Land Monitoring Service implementation.”

GAF is responsible for the overall project and quality management as well as for producing the very-high resolution land cover/land use product update.

(18 May, 2017) The European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen) has awarded a Framework Contract for the supply of the Copernicus Service in Support to EU External Action Geospatial Production , for a maximum value of 7.5 million euro, to a consortium of European industries led by e-GEOS – a joint venture between Telespazio (80%) and the Italian Space Agency (20%).

Through this service, e-GEOS will assist SatCen to support the European Union in its external action, providing EU with geo-information on remote, difficult to access critical areas, where security issues are at stake. Copernicus will also support EU in situations of crisis or emerging crisis and to prevent global and trans-regional threats having a destabilizing effect.

To grant the large satellite imagery 24/7 production capacity required by the contract, e-GEOS will lead a European consortium including GAF and Telespazio Iberica – both part of the Telespazio group-, Airbus Defence and Space, GMV, IABG and SIRS.

Massimo Comparini, CEO of e-GEOS, said: “We are honored to drive such a European industrial team in support to the EU SatCen, one of the most important entrusted entities of the European Commission. With this contract, e-GEOS, together with its industrial shareholders, Telespazio and Leonardo, is confirming its leadership as service provider within the European Copernicus programme and the importance to establish strong and valuable partnerships with key players to provide the best services to EU”.

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Neustrelitz, Germany, May 5, 2017. GAF AG provides worldwide high and medium resolution archive and fresh data through ESA’s Third Party Mission scheme.

ESA and GAF AG , the exclusive supplier in Europe of optical Indian remote sensing satellite (IRS) data from several missions, have entered into an agreement that makes the data from several Indian missions available to scientific users via ESA’s Third Party Mission (TPM) scheme.

The agreement encompasses European as well as worldwide archive data from the IRS-1C, IRS-1D and Resourcesat-1 missions, as well as archive and fresh data from Resourcesat-2 and Cartosat-1.

Interested scientists can submit project proposals, together with associated data requirements, to ESA. Depending on the scientific relevance of the proposal, ESA will grant the project a quota for IRS data products.

This allows access at no charge to high-resolution data from the PAN, LISS-IV Mono and LISS-III sensors as well as medium-resolution data from the WiFS and AWiFS sensors, from 1996 until today. Data can be obtained at different processing levels, including Euro-Maps 3D digital surface models (DSMs) with 5 m post spacing.

For more information, please visit https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/pi-community/apply-for-data/3rd-party or contact GAF’s customer support via tpm@gaf.de.

As a result of an earlier agreement, Oceansat-2 ocean color monitor (OCM) data acquired at the Neustrelitz ground station is also available free of charge to all users worldwide via ESA’s EOLI-SA or via the Lite Dissemination Server. See
http://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/3rd-party-missions/current-missions/oceansat-2. .

The above activities are funded by and carried out under the Third Party Mission scheme of the European Space Agency.

The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Space Agency.

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