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(Jan 2009) It’s rarely a problem to tell how rough the sea is when you’re afloat on it. But gauging conditions from a distance and across a wider area has always proved much harder.

Now scientists have pioneered a way to use signals from satellites in navigation systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) or Galileo to measure the intensity and direction of ocean wind and waves from space.

GPS signals are found constantly everywhere in the world, and if properly interpreted could dramatically improve our ability to monitor the oceans, providing a large amount of data on conditions at sea to marine scientists and meteorologists. This would help improve advance warning of storms and weather forecasts.

Specialised satellites can already provide data on wind speed and direction, but the global coverage is daily at best. Taking advantage of GPS signals could give scientists access to far more measurements closer to real-time.

The researchers hail from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), private company Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and the University of Sannio in Italy.

Surrey Satellite Technology developed a small, lightweight instrument that can be installed on a satellite in low Earth orbit to measure the signals bouncing off the planet from the network of GPS satellites orbiting far above. The researchers’ findings appear in Geophysical Research Letters.

‘This is a great achievement as it demonstrates the capability of this low-cost technology to provide ocean roughness data’, says Dr Christine Gommenginger, a specialist in exploiting satellite data for oceanography who supervised the project at NOCS, adding that this information is expected to complement rather than replace the data gained from dedicated Earth observation satellites.

The technique involves detecting signals from global navigation satellites after they are reflected from the ocean’s surface. The idea, known as Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry, or GNSS-R, was first proposed in 1993 but its spaceborne implementation is only now becoming a reality.
Satellites of opportunity

‘The GNSS-R instrument doesn’t need to generate its own sounding signals; it can therefore be very small and has low power requirements, so it could piggy-back on any satellite,’ adds Gommenginger.

‘In the future we would like to be able to put this kind of Earth observation payload on commercial satellites, such as telecommunication satellites, taking advantage of these as platforms of opportunity in space in the same way as in oceanography we now gather data with instruments on ships of opportunity.’

One such opportunity could have been on the Iridium NEXT constellation of telecommunications satellites, which was seeking Earth Observation instruments to include in their payload, but the timescale proved too short to make this a reality.

Work is now underway to build the next generation of GNSS-R receivers with improved performance in a project funded by the Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation led by SSTL. The team hope that such a GNSS-R receiver will be included in the payload of the follow-on to the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission – SMOSOps.

Researchers first proved the concept from space in 2005, but this early work gave information only on ocean roughness; the new work establishes for the first time that reflected navigation signals can also provide information about the direction of roughness.

Navigation satellites orbit around 20,000 kilometres above the ground. For this research their signals bounced off the sea surface and were collected by a receiver on Surrey Satellite Technology’s UK-DMC satellite, which orbits at just 680 kilometres. The UK-DMC satellite was part of the SSTL Disaster Monitoring Constellation, which main function is global imaging primarily for disaster monitoring purposes.

Just one second’s worth of GNSS-R data gives the scientists the information needed to build a picture of conditions at the sea surface. As well as directional wind and wave information, the reflected signals could also be mined for information about the mean sea level to perform ocean altimetry.

The researchers compared the satellite results with model predictions and against in situ wave data from the US National Data Buoy Center. Earlier research had collected reflected navigation satellite signals over the Mediterranean using a receiver on an aircraft, but the technique needed to be demonstrated from satellites which make it possible to achieve global coverage and does not depend on a time-limited aircraft mission to take measurements.

Source

(Jan 2009) DMCii and DynAgra help farmers control costs and boost yields

Canadian precision agriculture supplier and consultancy DynAgra has completed its first precision agriculture campaign using DMCii satellite imagery to provide sophisticated agronomic tools to its customers.

DynAgra tasked DMCii with acquiring multi-spectral imagery of agricultural plots in the province of Alberta. DMCii provided the imagery in an accurately orthorectified format that could be used
immediately in their Geographical Information System (GIS) applications.

Alex Melnitchouck, Senior Research Agronomist explained his reasons for working with DMCii, “For us it was important to have a responsive partner. DMCii were able to acquire cloud free imagery of the target areas during the very brief 2-3 week summer growing season in Western Canada.”

DMCii is in the unique position of having an operational constellation of 5 satellites, each of which is able to image a very large area in a given timeframe as the very wide swath images acquired offer daily revisit to global targets.

Owen Hawkins, Business Development Manager, DMCii explained the advantage of constellation imaging, “The Disaster Monitoring Constellation enables us to image very large areas in a short period of time, by coordinating the satellites we can provide daily revisit to an area. This is a big advantage when conducting such a time sensitive remote sensing campaign and offers significant commercial and technical advantages to our customers.”

Agronomy service providers are experiencing growing demand for precision agriculture tools and services. This is driven mainly by increasing fertiliser costs and crop prices, and growers increasing awareness that investment in simple technical tools can result in significant cost efficiencies, whilst improving crop output.

DynAgra uses the imagery from DMCii along with crop models to produce maps showing the density of green biomass. The company’s experts then work with the farmer to map out management zones within the fields.

The management zones are then further investigated by DynAgra’s highly skilled team of agronomists and remote sensing engineers using GPS-enabled Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to locate the management zones and record additional information about the concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, soil organic matter, pH and other soil characteristics.

Once the required information has been compiled, DynAgra produces a geographically referenced fertiliser application map for farmers describing which fertiliser should be used, where and in what quantity.

About DMC International Imaging Ltd
DMC International Imaging Ltd (DMCii) is a UK based supplier of remote sensing data products and services for international Earth Observation (EO) markets. DMCii supplies programmed and archived optical satellite imagery provided by the multi-satellite Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC). DMC data is now used in a wide variety of commercial and government applications including agriculture, forestry and environmental mapping.

In partnership with the British National Space Centre (BNSC) and the other DMC member nations (Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and Spain), DMCii works with the International Charter: ‘Space and Major Disasters’ to provide free satellite imagery for humanitarian use in the event of major international disasters such as tsunami, hurricanes, fires and flooding.

DMCii was formed in October 2004 and is a subsidiary of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, the world leader in small satellite technology. SSTL designed and built the DMC with the support of the BNSC and in conjunction with the DMC member nations Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and Spain.
www.dmcii.com

Notes to editor:
An accompanying DMCii satellite image of Grassy Lake, Alberta, Canada is available from Robin Wolstenholme or Paul Stephens upon request as a high resolution jpeg file.

Image caption: Close-up of a small part of a 650 km wide DMC satellite image showing Grassy Lake, Alberta, Canada. The red areas are a false colour representation of Near Infrared radiation which is invisible to the human eye, and which is a strong signature for vegetation. The image shows various crop patterns including circular irrigation systems. UK DMC image copyright SSTL 2008.

This press release can be downloaded from www.ballard.co.uk/dmcii

Press contacts:
Robin Wolstenholme, Ballard Communications Management
Tel: +44 (0)1306 882288
Email: r.wolstenholme@ballard.co.uk

Paul Stephens,
Sales & Marketing Director, DMC International Imagingm Ltd.
Tel: +44 (0)1483 804299
Email: p.stephens@dmcii.com

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In 331 days’ time, 15,000 officials from 200 countries will gather in the Danish capital with 1 goal: to find a solution to global warming. Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, presents the first in a series of dispatches on the crucial summit

Three hundred and thirty-one days, plus a final frantic fortnight: not very long, really, to put together the most complex and vital agreement the world has ever seen. But that’s all the time there is: in 331 days from now, on 7 December, the UN Climate Conference will open in Copenhagen and the world community will try to agree a solution to the gravest threat it has ever faced: global warming

Between 10,000 and 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, campaigners and media personnel from nearly 200 countries, almost certainly joined by limousine-loads of heads of state and government from America’s President Barack Obama down are expected to meet in the Danish capital in one of the most significant gatherings in history.

If that sounds like exaggeration, we need only glance at some historical comparisons. The Copenhagen meeting will have a far broader reach and potential impact on the world than the Congress of Vienna, say, the 1814-1815 assembly which attempted to reorder Europe after the Napoleonic wars, or the Paris peace conference of 1919, which tried to construct a new global order after the First World War, or the 1945 meetings at Yalta and Potsdam which tried to do the same after the Second World War. For they were all dealing with national boundaries, politics and political structures, phenomena which of course are vital in human terms, but ephemeral and changeable. Copenhagen will be dealing with something fundamental to life on earth: the stability of the biosphere.

Known officially in UN-speak as COP 15 – the 15th meeting of the parties of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change – the meeting in Denmark will try to work out a way for the world to act together to preserve the thin envelope of atmosphere, soil and sea which surrounds our planet and enables us to live, in the face of rising temperatures which threaten to destroy its habitability.

All the world’s major governments, including the once-sceptical administration of the US President George Bush, now formally accept that temperature rises have already begun, are likely if unchecked to prove disastrous for human civilisation, and are being caused by emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from our power plants, factories and motor vehicles.

But if all the major governments now accept it, getting them to agree on how to tackle it still seems a very long way off indeed. The essential problem, to use the jargon, is burden-sharing. We know the world has to cut its CO2 emissions drastically, and soon. But which countries are to cut them, by how much?

The Chinese, for example, with their scarcely believable economy growing at 10 per cent a year, have now overtaken the Americans as the biggest carbon emitters; but historically, America has emitted far more; and on a per capita basis, US emissions still dwarf those of China. So the Chinese have felt (so far) that they have a moral right for their economy to grow unchecked, and their carbon emissions to grow with it; but many Americans have felt (so far) that they see no reason to act unilaterally to cut their own CO2 if the Chinese are not willing to do the same.

Differences like those stubbornly percolate the whole negotiating process and make achieving a universal agreement mind-bogglingly hard. “This is the most complicated deal the world has ever tried to put together,” says Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College and an adviser on climate change to the Foreign Office. “In effect, you’re asking nearly 200 countries to align their energy policies – to create a common world energy policy. If you look at how hard it has been for the member states of the European Union to align their energy policies, you get an idea of the difficulty of attempting it with the whole world.”

Yet it has to be done, and the penalty for failure could not be higher. It is just 20 years since the world woke up to the danger of rising carbon emissions destabilising the atmosphere. Two decades ago it seemed a fairly distant threat, prefigured principally in supercomputer climate prediction programmes; something that was likely to happen a comfortably long distance away, such as at the end of the 21st century.

Three things have altered since then. First, the changing climate is now visible, not just in computer predictions, but all around us: spring in southern Britain, for example, is arriving about three weeks earlier than it did 40 years ago. At this time last year a red admiral butterfly, an archetypal creature of the summer, was photographed perching on a snowdrop, a flower of the winter – a previously unheard-of occurrence.

Second, it has become clear in the past five years that the earth is responding to the increasing CO2 loading of the atmosphere much more rapidly than scientists initially thought. There are numerous examples but to instance just one, the summer sea ice of the Arctic Ocean is melting far more quickly than anyone imagined.

Third, it has become apparent, even more recently, that global emissions of CO2 are shooting up at a rate that far exceeds anything the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thought possible when it sketched out future emissions scenarios in a special report in 2000. Even though we have had 20 years to think about emissions cuts, and 11 years of the Kyoto protocol, the treaty which actually prescribed the first cuts for the industrialised countries, emissions are soaring as never before.

Some leading climate scientists are now openly voicing concerns that this makes it increasingly unlikely we can meet the aim of keeping global temperature rise to about 2C above the pre-industrial level, which is generally regarded as the most that may be endured by human society without mortal danger. (We are now at about 0.75 degrees C above pre-industrial, and another 0.6 of a degree is thought to be inevitable because of the CO2 which has already been emitted).

Certainly, if we are to have any chance at all at holding the increase to two degrees, there is wide agreement that global emissions have to peak very soon – probably by 2015 or 2016 – and then rapidly decrease, to 80 per cent below present levels by 2050. The later the peak, the greater (and therefore more difficult) the subsequent decrease would have to be.

That’s the pathway the world has to follow. Copenhagen offers the chance to set out along it. But even if the deal in December is not as ambitious as scientists and environmentalists insist is necessary – and at the moment, that seems pretty likely – it is vital that there is actually an accord. Disagreement would be a catastrophe.

Three conditions, according to Britain’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, have to be fulfilled for Copenhagen to be regarded as a success. First, the wealthy industrialised countries have to agree tough new targets for cutting their C02. Second, the developing countries led by China, even if they do not take on the same sort of numerical targets, have to move away from “business as usual”. And third, the rich nations have to agree a way of financing the developing countries, especially the poorer ones, in the measures they take to adapt to the climate change that is coming anyway. Otherwise they won’t sign up to anything.

Securing such a deal will be a matter of political will: a global political consensus will have to be hammered out. It is becoming clear that, over the next 11 months, the world could well do with a high-level political fixer, jetting unceasingly from capital to capital, to pull such a consensus together, in the manner in which the Argentine diplomat, Raul Estrada, managed to pull the original Kyoto agreement together in the Japanese city in December 1997. It could be Britain’s Ed Miliband, according to Tom Burke. “There has to be someone who can put the time in, and go round various capitals and talk to the key people at a very high level, and not just environment ministers,” he says. “Ed Miliband could play that role. He’s known to be close to Gordon Brown, and Britain is reasonably respected for its record on climate change. It doesn’t have to be him. But there probably needs to be someone.”

However, Mr Miliband, and the British Government, may face a problem of reduced credibility in climate change terms as a result of two policy decisions likely to be taken in the next few weeks. One, which Mr Miliband will take personally, is whether or not to agree to a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. If he gives it the go-ahead, without strict controls over its emissions, environmentalists will accuse him of sanctioning a new generation of power plants run on the most carbon-intensive fuel. The other is whether or not to allow Heathrow airport to build a third runway, and thus expand British aviation, whose CO2 emissions are growing faster than those of any other sector.

If both these projects go ahead – as seems perfectly possible – there is no doubt that the UK’s position as a potential Copenhagen broker will be weakened. “If countries like Britain, who, for better or worse, are the global leaders, go to Copenhagen with new coal-fired power stations and expanding airports at home, it’s very difficult to see how we will be taken seriously by other countries which have even more serious energy security problems and concerns about economic growth,” said Robin Oakley, the head of climate change at Greenpeace UK. “That leadership can’t just be shown by grandstanding at the meeting. It has to be shown by what we do in our domestic policy.”

In the absence of Mr Miliband or any other leading politician emerging as the Copenhagen fixer, the key player in the process is likely to be Barack Obama. The President-elect has already opened a chasm, in terms of climate change policy, between himself and the outgoing George Bush, who, in 2001, withdrew the US from Kyoto and began years of climate policy obstructionism.

Mr Bush wanted no truck with emissions cuts of any sort; Mr Obama has pledged he will get US emissions down to 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050 (a target identical with Britain’s) and “engage vigorously” with the international negotiating process over the next few months. Hints have been dropped that he may convene meetings of key world leaders to speed the negotiations along. It seems highly likely that he will go to Copenhagen himself – which means every other world leader will want to be present.

Whether or not they can do the deal the world needs is another matter. Yet there is no doubt the world needs it. It may seem reasonable to think, in the coldest winter for years, that global warming has gone away, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Source Independednt

To reduce illegal dumping of industrial waste, the Environment Ministry has started to use an Earth observation satellite to monitor areas from space, it was learned Thursday.

The Iwate prefectural government has begun experimentally receiving relevant satellite data and has given administrative guidance to companies that have illegally dumped industrial waste.

Iwate’s success has prompted the ministry to decide to use satellite data to clamp down on illegal dumping of industrial waste nationwide.

The ministry plans to make use of the observation satellite in fiscal 2009 together with prefectures that want to use the satellite.

The satellite, called Daichi, is one of the world’s largest Earth observation satellites. It was launched in 2006 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for the purpose of creating detailed maps and other images.

Daichi can take photographs at resolutions high enough to distinguish objects as small as 2.5 meters in diameter. The cost of a one-time image capture use of the satellite is 200,000 yen, one-tenth to one-eighth the cost to use a U.S. commercial satellite for the same purpose.

Since January 2008, the Iwate prefectural government has been employing a system developed by Iwate University that allows it to create color photos based on satellite data.

With the help of the satellite, which detects changes on the ground, including the accumulation of industrial waste, the prefectural government can closely watch remote areas that are difficult to monitor from the ground.

Using the satellite, the prefectural government has been able to uncover several dumping cases in which companies illegally expanded their waste disposal sites. Local governments have issued these companies administrative guidance to rectify the situations.

(Jan. 9, 2009) The Yomiuri Shimbun

Source

(Jan 2009) VietNamNet Bridge – Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, agreed that France would be the provider of technology and official development assistance (ODA) for the natural resources, environment and disaster monitoring small satellite (VNREADSat-1), Vietnam’s second satellite after Vinasat-1.

The prime minister assigned the Institute for Science and Technology of Vietnam to develop this project, which aims to serve the strategy on research and application of space technology to 2020.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment is responsible for formalities related to French ODA for this project.

VNREDSat-1 is a small-sized earth observation satellite, a proposed 150 kilogrammes in weight with a five-year life expectancy. The satellite is scheduled to be operational in 2012 and will be used to help Vietnam map its natural resources and provide information about the environment and disasters.

National Space Science and Technology Research Programme Chairman Nguyen Khoa Son said the project would cost an estimated US$100 million and help free Vietnam from reliance on satellite images provided by other countries.

The VNREDSat-1 project was initiated five years ago when Vietnam cooperated with a UK-owned space organisation to study the country’s capacity to launch a small earth observation satellite, the paper said.

Vietnam’s first satellite, VINASAT-1, was launched in April to improve telecommunications services, Internet and TV broadcasts to the country’s most remote areas. The $200 million satellite’s footprint extends over southeast and east Asia, India and Hawaii.

(Source: VNE/TN)

(Jan 2009) Farmers of Northeast can now interact with top scientists of the country and seek solutions to their problems related to farming, market, health and weather dynamics from their nearest Village Resource Centres (VRC).

The Shillong-based North Eastern Space Application Centre (NESAC) in association with Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has set up 34 VRCs across the North-East, and proposes to set up around 50 more to bring the farmers closer to experts who can guide them in various fields.

Farmers across 10 VRCs of Assam interacted with agricultural experts who were stationed at NESAC during the ‘Farmers Virtual Congress’ as part of the 96th Indian Science Congress here on Monday.

NESAC Director P P Nageswara Rao said the VRC would serve as single window access to information for farmers across the region with respect to various problems faced by them during cultivation, marketing, health and weather dynamics.

He said, “Normally it is not possible for the farmers to interact with a galaxy of experts. The VRC network would serve this purpose.”

Once the system comes up, the farmers of the region would sit with a interpreter in front of a computer set in the VRC and would seek advise from the experts sited at the base in any part of the country.

The NESAC has collaborated with the Assam Agricultural University, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Guwahati Medical College and other institutes to fructify the advisory system.

The ISRO has funded the entire hardware, transponder time and bandwidth in the VRCs, while the local collaborators in each state like Assam Branch of Indian Tea Association (ABITA) in Assam would bear other costs like sponsoring a local coordinator.

Of the 34 VRC set up so far, 16 are in Sikkim, 8 in Nagaland and 10 across Assam. The VRC are likely to be functional by June next year, and NESAC proposes to hold one interaction with the farmers of the NE states once a week.

The agro-meteorology advisory services would be provided by the NESAC itself.

Source:“Spacemart”:http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Indian_Farmers_To_Consult_Scientists_Via_Satellite_999.html and Press Trust of India

Japan is set to launch its Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) this month in an effort to monitor the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane around the world.

Slated to launch using the H-2A rocket on January 21, GOSAT is also known as Ibuki, which is Japanese for “breath” because the satellite will track how the Earth exhales greenhouse gases in 56,000 locations around the world. It will orbit at an altitude of 666 kilometers above the Earth.

There were only 282 land-based observation points as of October, according to Takashi Hamazaki, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The agency said the $372.9 million satellite will orbit Earth once every three days with two sensors that will gauge the density of greenhouse gases based on observed infrared rays. The denser the gases, the more infrared rays of light are absorbed.

One sensor will be used to determine the presence of clouds. When clouds are present, it is difficult to provide an accurate analysis. Therefore, the satellite will only take readings in clear weather.

Data will be collected each month, with the first set of data expected by April or May. Researchers with the Japanese Environment Ministry and the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Studies will be the first to analyze the satellite’s data before sharing the information with scientists worldwide. GOSAT is set to be in orbit for five years.

Hamazaki said the project is important because certain regions, such as developing countries, are lacking proper monitoring of greenhouse gases.

“To fight climate change, we need to monitor the density of greenhouse gases in all regions around the world and how their levels change,” Hamazaki said. “But at the moment, there are very few observation sites on land and they are concentrated in certain areas.”

“By comparison, GOSAT will have 56,000 observation points and will be able to acquire data covering the entire globe every three days. We think this will improve the accuracy of global warming predictions.”

The project’s launch comes as Japan continues its attempts to meet its 2008-2012 Kyoto Protocol target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

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On the Net:
Launch of IBUKI Special Site
“Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite “IBUKI”(GOSAT)”:http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
Reuters

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

(Dec 2008) Based on the outstanding success of the first tandem mission between ERS-2 and Envisat , ESA has paired the two satellites together again to help improve our understanding of the planet.

ERS-2, ESA’s veteran spacecraft, and Envisat, the largest environmental satellite ever built, both carry Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments that provide high resolution images of the Earth’s surface. By combining two or more SAR images of the same site, slight alterations that may have occurred between acquisitions can be detected.

This technique, known as SAR interferometry or InSAR, has proven to be very useful for applications such as glacier monitoring, surface deformation detection and terrain mapping.

ESA engineers configured the first SAR tandem mission, which took place from September 2007 to February 2008, and the current one, which began on 23 November, to ensure that the satellites both acquire data over the same area just 28 minutes apart.

This short time separation allows for changes that occur quickly to be detected. Fast-moving glaciers, for instance, move more than 200 m per year and can move as much as 1 cm in 30 minutes. The ability to detect these small changes occurring on the ground between acquisitions is also allowing scientists to understand better and improve the quality of the SAR interferometry technique.

The current tandem mission, scheduled to run until 27 January 2009, is continuing the work of the first tandem mission with respect to measuring the velocity of fast-moving glaciers, detecting land-ice motion and developing elevation models over flat terrain.

However, based on the first mission’s proven ability to provide precise elevation information over flat regions, data from the current mission will also be used to identify natural carbon sources and sinks in Kazakh Steppe and wetlands in permafrost regions.

A challenging configuration

ESA engineers had to overcome many challenges in order to put Envisat and ERS-2 into a tandem flight configuration. For instance, in 2001 ERS-2 lost the ability to be manoeuvred in the usual way by onboard gyroscopes, navigational tools that allow mission controllers to maintain the correct position of satellites.

The operational lifetime of satellite missions is normally determined by the functioning of onboard gyroscopes. Without them, the ESA team had to work out a way of positioning the spacecraft by operating onboard sensors in a new way.

Part of their creative solution involved using a device called the Digital Earth Sensor (DES), which is designed to provide the horizon line to allow basic checks on the spacecraft’s position, and analysing Doppler frequency shifts in the signals of ERS-2’s radar instruments.

ERS-2, launched in 1995, and Envisat, launched in 2002, have exceeded the time they were intended to stay in orbit. Since they remain operational and continue to provide quality data about our planet, engineers are trying to use as little fuel as possible so as not to shorten their lifetimes.

“The strategy is to align the tandem start date with an Envisat manoeuvre. Therefore, there is no need to spend extra hydrazine for Envisat. For ERS, the manoeuvre to place it in tandem position is such that the satellite drifts back to its nominal orbit without additional manoeuvre after the tandem campaign,” ESA Mission Planner Manager Sergio Vazzana said.

Source Spacemart

(Dec 2008) In the coming days, the Colombian government will make a very important decision for the country: how and when to launch the first national satellite. There are multiple options on the table – and contradictory positions

For more than 20 years, one of the dreams of Colombian governments and presidents alike has been to have the country’s own satellite in space, which would allow Colombia autonomy and freedom in the management of its telecommunications.

It now appears that before the end of this year, the government will make a decision in the cabinet to launch not one but two satellites before 2010. The problem is that there are already divisions among those in the Uribe administration.

For several months, the Ministry of Communications together with the Colombian Commission on Space presided by Vice President Francisco Santos, has led a process to launch a powerful telecommunications satellite that would guarantee sufficient capacity to make up for the growing needs in the next 15-20 years.

To finalize this project, the ministry has set aside 100 billion pesos (over 43 million USD) next year and has announced that it will designate another 350 billion (150 million USD) between 2010 and 2012, coming from the telecommunications fund, with the goal of financing 280 million dollars that this single mega satellite will cost.

But this is not the only initiative. The ministry has been accompanying the Geographic Institute Agustín Codazzi, which also has a project to launch a satellite for observation of Earth, which could cost 100-150 million dollars.

On the other hand a consortium of companies from five countries made a proposal to the Office of the Vice President, Ministries of Defense and of Communications, the Agustín Codazzi and to the National Planning Department to launch a veritable constellation of up to seven satellites, costing between 250 and 300 million dollars.

This constellation will have a geostationary satellite, like the one sought by the Ministry of Communications, but with a smaller but scalable capacity. Buying one of those large satellites “would be as if a family going on an excursion purchased a TransMilenio (the public transportation system in Bogotá) bus with the idea that along the way passengers would be picked up to fill up the bus and thus pay for all of the expenses,” says an expert consulted by SEMANA.

In addition to the communications satellite that costs 150 million dollars, it would be possible to have one for Earth’s observation, capable of taking photos with a one meter resolution, like what the Agustín Codazzi wants. This satellite would have a synthetic aperture radar with multiple military and civilian uses, which would allow for the generation of a whole new industry in Colombia and would put the country at the forefront in Latin America. All this would supposedly cost the same as the mega-satellite.

The Vice Minister of Communications Daniel Medina told SEMANA that he is thinking of a satellite with 32 transponders (a system for which signals are received and retransmitted) because the demand for broad band is going to be very high. According to the connectivity plan, in the coming years more than 30,000 schools have to be equipped with broad band, of which half will have to be via satellite.

The problem is that the same ministry was wrong ten years ago when it designed the Compartel program, which contracted 10,000 fixed telephony points and a few broad band points via satellite in rural and marginalized areas of the country. What nobody predicted was the overwhelming advance in cellular telephones that arrived to many of those areas which put the program in crisis. Fortunately this program is on the verge of being reoriented.

That is why several experts consulted by SEMANA believe that it is better to launch a satellite with less capacity and a lower pricetag, in order to minimize risks and to use the remaining funds to add on new satellites.

Some military officials believe that instead of having an observation satellite it would be better to have a SAR, synthetic aperture radar satellite, which would be able to penetrate the permanently clouded areas of the country in order to observe both day and night everything from volcanic activity, to snow-capped mountains and rivers, to coffee or coca crops and even to armed groups in jungles and mountains.

At the same time, spokespersons from the consortium tell SEMANA that they could acquire about four low-orbit communications satellites, known as LEO. Located about 800 kilometers from the earth, each one of those satellites would pass by the country every 45 minutes, which would allow them to make a follow-up almost in real time for civilian and military installations that require it, for maritime vessels and land vehicles, and for the troops who today are in the jungle and can last weeks without their whereabouts being known.

Precisely what the government has in its hands is the possibility of giving a technological leap which would replace mules with satellites, but that requires policy definitions of what the country wants and needs, and not what each of its ministries and their entities desire.

A constellation not only will give greater capacity to the armed forces but will also create a new civilian knowledge-based industry in the country. More importantly, it will give Colombia independence to measure and look at what it is interested in, and not, as is the case today, what interests the owners of the satellites that it uses.

The Ministry of Communications said that for now the government is studying the matter and coordinating between the different ministries and entities in order to bring the issue to the cabinet before year’s end. “No decisions have been made and we are open to exploring all the possibilities,” said Medina.

It is time that Colombia takes on this technological leap, but it should do so in a sound footing in order to not embark the country on a wrong path into space.

Source

Supervised Crop Classification from Medium Resolution Multitemporal Images.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has organized its second joint MERIS and (A)ATSR workshop, which was hosted at ESA ESRIN in Frascati, Italy from 22 to 26 September 2008.

The workshop was intended to address the utilisation of MERIS and (A)ATSR data for remote sensing of open oceans, coastal waters, land surfaces and atmospheric processes with the main objectives as listed below:

  • Present the latest results and status of research and development projects (including AO and cat-1).
  • Review capabilities and achievements in the use of MERIS and (A)ATSR data for applications development in the land, marine and atmosphere domains.
  • Update MERIS and (A)ATSR data users on instrument performance and product quality.
  • Formulate recommendations for improved data access and utilization, including ordering and analysis tools, algorithms and new product development.
  • Foster enhanced collaboration between MERIS and (A)ATSR research groups
  • Inform users on the current status of the GMES Sentinel 2 and 3 payloads.

from Gisat website

Gisat has presented our experiences with the use of multitemporal medium resolution satellite imagery for the agricultural land use mapping and crop classification in particular.

Workshop presentation