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(Dec 2008) EADS Astrium has chosen Arianespace to launch the SSOT Sistema Satelital para Observación de la Tierra Earth observation satellite for the Government of Chile.


SSOT is a high-resolution Earth observation satellite. It will be boosted into Sun-synchronous orbit by a Soyuz launcher from the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Slated for launch during the first half of 2010, SSOT will be built by Astrium using the Myriade platform, within the scope of a contract awarded by the Chilean government.

SSOT will provide Chile with very-high-quality images for both civil and military applications: mapping, agriculture, natural resources management, natural disaster and risks management, etc.

About Arianespace

Arianespace is the world’s leading launch Service & Solutions company, delivering innovative services and solutions to its customers since 1980. Backed by 23 shareholders and the European Space Agency, Arianespace offers an unrivalled launcher family, comprising Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega, and an international workforce renowned for their culture of commitment and excellence. As of December 15, 2008, Arianespace had launched a total of 263 payloads, including more than half of all the commercial satellites now in service worldwide. It has a backlog of nearly 25 Ariane 5 and 10 Soyuz launches, equal to more than 3 years of business.

Posted in Space Race News, NASA
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(Dec 2008) NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and their international partners cut the ribbon Friday in Nairobi, Kenya, for SERVIR-Africa. The SERVIR-Africa system integrates the satellite resources of the United States and other countries into a Web-based Earth information system.

(WASHINGTON) This effort puts previously inaccessible information into the hands of local scientists, government leaders and communities to help address concerns related to natural disasters, disease outbreaks, biodiversity and climate change.

SERVIR, Spanish for “to serve,” has been in operation in Central America, the Caribbean and southern Mexico since 2005. Now, through the support of multiple government agencies and other organizations, NASA and USAID are expanding the system to Africa in partnership with the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development in Nairobi. The center, an intergovernmental organization with 15 member states in eastern and southern Africa, is a leader in geospatial mapping in the region.

“A satellite birds-eye view can provide an overall picture of a natural disaster, such as a flood, and its consequences,” said Tesfaye Korme, director of remote sensing and geographic information systems at the center. “Using the SERVIR-Africa platform, we will be able to develop near-real time maps of flood-affected areas to estimate the number of displaced people and locate potential transportation disruptions.”

SERVIR-Africa will use Earth science satellite data from many of NASA’s missions and other information to better predict areas at risk for severe flooding and map regions hit by floods. It also will develop an early-warning tool to predict the distribution of vector-borne diseases such as Rift Valley Fever. By mapping the location of climate change projections, the system will allow people to see impacts on such things as Africa’s diverse ecosystems.

SERVIR-Africa’s information technology team will use the Internet to acquire and distribute satellite and ground-based Earth observations, map data, and geospatial analyses that target issues such as urbanization, biodiversity threats, and management of natural resources.

SERVIR-Africa will benefit from the breadth and depth of valuable NASA Earth science satellite and model analyses,” said Dan Irwin, SERVIR project director at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. “Science and technology are key, but ultimately it is the combination of local knowledge along with space-based observations that makes real time monitoring of Africa’s environment effective.”

The strength of the SERVIR system is in its diverse international team of scientists, developers and researchers. SERVIR-Africa builds on existing capacity at the mapping center in Nairobi. The center, together with SERVIR’s lead partner in Central America, the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean, are jointly developing an integrated system. These two regional organizations are standardizing database management and evaluating common methods for predicting severe weather events, analyzing impacts from climate change and working to understand health and ecosystem interactions.

SERVIR also has been building relationships with industry

“Public-private partnerships are critical to the success of the SERVIR system,” said Jacqueline E. Schafer of USAID. “Bringing together the expertise and resources of geospatial information systems software and cell phone companies, university researchers, conservation organizations, and governments, SERVIR puts science and technology into the hands of local decision-makers.”

The SERVIR system was developed with USAID by researchers at a global coordination office and rapid prototyping facility at Marshall. Three other NASA centers — NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, Calif., and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — partnered with Marshall on the system. Also participating in the implementation of SERVIR-Africa is the Institute for the Application of Geospatial Technology in Auburn, N.Y.

For information about SERVIR, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/servir

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov

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(Dec 2008) Malaysia is zooming in on forests with a satellite in order to fight illegal logging which its government says is harming the major timber exporting country, a report said last week December 2008.

Darus Ahmad, deputy director-general with the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, said the “eye in the sky” programme was put in place in October.

“There is always criticisms that our forests are diminishing,” he was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times newspaper.

Darus said that using satellite images the authorities can establish a national forest inventory of the country’s total area of forest cover.

They can then check whether logging in a particular area is legal or not, he said, adding that the facility was currently available in the western peninsular part of Malaysia only.

Darus also said the system can be used to prevent air pollution by detecting forest fires and illegal land clearing.

In the 1990s alone, Malaysia lost more than 13 percent of its forests, with much of the deforestation on the island of Borneo, which it shares with Indonesia and Brunei.

The World Wildlife Fund at the time estimated that illegally logged trees made up about one third of Malaysia’s timber exports.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last year pledged not to indiscriminately approve logging licences, amid mounting concern that clearances are threatening endangered species and tribal communities.

Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who also heads the National Forestry Council, later warned that illegal logging could undermine Malaysia.

“It can jeopardise our efforts to preserve biodiversity, flora and fauna and have an impact on global warming. At the international level, illegal logging portrays a negative image of our country,” he said.

“It can harm our national economy as the timber industry produces 23 billion ringgit (6.8 billion dollars) worth of wood-based products a year,” he added.

The European Union market accounts for about 30 percent of Malaysia’s annual timber exports.

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(Dec 2008) Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair has said that after the success of Chandrayaan 1, India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is going to launch an exclusive weather satellite jointly with the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) in 2009

The satellite, named ‘Mehga Tropiques’ will study the tropical atmosphere and its associated phenomena and would help India and France to study the cyclones, monsoon and other changes.

The Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) would be built and launched by ISRO and two instruments called SCARAB and SAPHIR would be built by the CNES.

The other critical instrument called MADRAS will be jointly engineered by ISRO and CNES.

Talking to reporters here on the sidelights of a programme on Monday, Nair said that the satellite would be launched by the end of 2009.

“It is a joint agreement between France and ISRO. Some instruments are made by French people and some we are doing it. By the end of the 2009, it would be launched. This satellite will provide lot of inputs for weather modulates and near time weather forecast and so on,” said Nair.

The satellite would be operated by ISRO and both the countries (India and France) would share data.

India hopes to send an astronaut into space by 2012 and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

India’s Chandrayaan-1, the first unmanned spacecraft mission to moon and the country’s first space vehicle to venture beyond Earth’s orbit successfully entered lunar orbit on November 8.

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China plans to launch the first satellite of the Fengyun-4 (FY-4) series by 2013, said the China Meteorological Administration (CMA). The FY-4 project involves the country’s second-generation of geo-stationary meteorological satellites.

Leading scientists and engineers believe FY-4 could help China more accurately forecast weather, climate, environment and natural disasters, when it is launched. Currently, the project is in the proposal stage.

CMA Vice Director, Yu Rucong, said FY-4, a successor of the FY-2 series, would further boost China’s ability to monitor cloud systems and atmosphere temperature and humidity.

China plans to launch another 22 meteorological satellites by 2020. Four are from the FY-2 series, 12 from the FY-3 series and six from the FY-4 series.

Sun Laiyan, vice director of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, said the FY series had become a model of remote sensing satellite operations and civilian satellite services.

No details of just what FY-4 will be able to do have been decided on. However, scientists say it will be more advanced than FY-3 which launched at the Taiyuan satellite center in northern Shanxi Province May 27.

FY-3 worked with the FY-2D to ensure timely weather forecasts during the Beijing Olympic Games. It is equipped with a dozen detectors such as the infrared scan actinograph and a microwave formatter. FY-3 can provide data to forecast between 10 to 15 days of weather in a row.

Source Xinhua News Agency

Remote sensing is the science and art of obtaining information about an object, area, or phenomenon through the analysis of data acquired by a device that is not in contact with the object, area, or phenomenon under investigation. Providing an exciting introduction to the field, this book covers the science of remote sensing from physical basis to sensors and applications.

The new Sixth Edition not only offers the latest information, but also has been revised to make the material more accessible.

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Title Index:
1. Concepts and Foundations of Remote Sensing.
2. Elements of Photographic Systems.
3. Basic Principles of Photogrammetry.
4. Introduction to Visual Image Interpretation.
5. Multispectral, Thermal and Hyperspectral Sensing.
6. Earth Resource Satellites Operating in the Opticak Spectrum.
7. Digital Image Interpretation and Analysis.
8. Microwave and Lidar Sensing.

Appendix A Radiometric Concepts, Terminology and Units.
Appendix B Remote Sensing Data and Information Resources.
Appendix C Sample Coordinate Transformation and Resampling Procedures.
Appendix D Radar Signal Concepts, Terminology and Units.

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“We’re an Earth-imaging satellite, and we can sell our imagery to customers around the world who have a need to map and measure and monitor things on the ground”

This bird’s-eye view of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania was the first image ever seen by the GeoEye-1, the world’s highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google, when it opened its camera door earlier this week.

The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on Oct. 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 cm — close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye’s vice president of communications and marketing.

Even though the GeoEye-1 satellite sports a colorful Google sticker, its key customer is actually not Google but rather the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a U.S. government agency that analyzes imagery in support of national security. The NGA is paying for half of the development of the $502 million satellite and has committed to purchasing imagery from it. Google is GeoEye’s second major partner.

“This is the opposite of a spy satellite,” Brender said in a phone interview. “Spies don’t put info on the internet and sell imagery. We’re an Earth-imaging satellite, and we can sell our imagery to customers around the world who have a need to map and measure and monitor things on the ground.”

Geoeye3_2 Since around the late 70s, the military has used high-resolution spy satellites capable of reading newspaper headlines in Red Square. But only in recent years the technology became available to the public and businesses while concurrently making dramatic strides in coverage and resolution. For example, when Google Earth launched in 2004, its imagery was low-res and spotty. But by March 2006, a third of the world population could get a bird’s-eye view of their own homes in high resolution.

There’s one catch for Google: While the GeoEye-1 will provide imagery to the NGA at the maximum resolution of 43 cm, Google will only receive images at a 50-cm resolution because of a government restriction, Brender explained. However, Google’s partnership with GeoEye is exclusive, meaning the search-engine giant will be the only online mapping site using the satellite’s photos.

“We’re commercializing a technology that was once only in the hands of the governments,” Brender said. “Just like the internet, just like GPS, just like telecom — all invented by the government. And now we are on the front end of the spear that is commercializing this technology.”

Considered the world’s most-accurate commercial imaging satellite, the GeoEye-1 had been undergoing calibration and inspection since it was launched on Sept. 6 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A second satellite, GeoEye-2, slated to launch in 2011 or 2012, will have a resolution of 25 cm, company representatives promised. However, Google’s satellite imagery will not likely get more detailed because of the 50-cm regulation.

See also:“Google Launches Super-Spycam Into Space; Logo Goes Along for a Ride”:http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/08/google-launches.html

By Brian X. Chen, October 08, 2008
Categories: Images, Research, Space – Photo: GeoEye
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Geosat Technology

Geosat Technology Ltd. 2004 was created by DI Michael Mumelte, the head office of the company is is loacated in Berndorf which is close to Vienna, Austria. The Geosat Technology Ltd. is an international service company with a new and innovative technology, which can find hydrocarbon resources based on the evaluation of satellite and geo data. The Geosat method is not restricted to oil and gas exploration but is also applicable to finding other natural resources (such as Diamonds, Gold and other minerals) and even water.

Technological innovation – Remote Sensing

The remote Sensing is a procedure for the gaining of information about the earth’s surface by measurement and interpretation of their outgoing (energy) fields. The multi-spectral illustration of the earth’s surface is reached by non-contact observation over satellite sensors, whereby the reflected or emitted electromagnetic radiation serves as storage medium. Images from remote sensing satellites have been used for geological and environmental mapping since the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972. Today, imagery covering from visible, infrared thermal and microwave section of the electromagnetic spectrum are being used to support exploration and production activities. The Geosat Technology method, which can be applied independently of geographical or political situation on the whole globe will revolutionize the exploration of hydrocarbons.

Why we are different?

The product of the Geosat Technology Ltd. are maps with exact location of hydrocarbon traps. Through our mathematical methods we are able to achieve a very high resolution and detailed description of the geological structure. The principle method of the Geosat Technology is the superimposing of structural lineament analysis, analysis of thermal infrared images and spectral analysis and incorporation of geological, litho logical and if available also geophysical data. A special value gains the Geosat method by the possibility, to detect also other natural resources such as diamond, gold, uranium, etc. as well as the most valuable resources water. The technology could be used for onshore as well as for offshore exploration (shallow water up to maximum water depth of 200 m). The Gesoat Method a cost effective, time-saving and environmental friendly alternative to the conventional exploration methods.

InnoExTM – Innovative Exploration

Using the Geosat method and based on its results the application of further complementary technologies are used to determine accurate drilling points. Microbiological and Geochemical and/or Geo-electrochemical analysis combined well as with Magneto Telluric survey over prospects determined by the Geosat method can define whether it is oil, gas or gas condensate and can also define the top of the reservoirs as well as porosity. Such surveys are rounded up by High Resolution Ground Magnetic (HRGM). The combination of these technologies with the Geosat method is unique and extremely cost and time effective.

Future-oriented market chances

In order to attain a global competitive advantage with this technology, Geosat Technology Ltd. expands their presence in the upcoming years from the head office in Europe to existing branches in North and South America to Asia and Africa. Recently a contract for a large-scale project in Egypt has been signed, further projects in South America are presently discussed. On an oil and gas conference in London in March 2007 (APPEX) it was stated that 55% of the assumed world-wide oil and gas reserves still have not been found yet. The Geosat Technology Ltd. is able to find oil and gas prospects fast, economically much more effectively. Hence, the future potential is enormous.

Source GEOSAT
Source YourOilandGas

The UAE’s first remote-sensing earth observation satellite, DubaiSat 1, is ready for launch later this year.


Dubai, September 23: The UAE’s first remote-sensing earth observation satellite, DubaiSat 1, is ready for launch later this year, the country’s top science institute announced in Dubai on Tuesday.

The satellite will provide the UAE with its first dedicated “eye in the sky” and will be launched onboard by a Russian rocket through the Moscow-based International Space Company, Kosmotras, the Emirates Institute for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) said in Dubai.

DubaiSat 1 has been developed by SatrecI in South Korea and EIAST engineers participated in its development. “It will be one of the most advanced small size satellite of its kind and not only this but the UAE team which participated in its development was also the highlight of the project,” Director General of EIAST Ahmed Obaid Al Mansoori said.

The development team of DubaiSat-1 has already started working on finalising designs for DubaiSat-2 and strategic partners for the project are also being selected, Mansoori said. He added that the new satellite’s planned launch is 2012.

Source

ESA received 12 proposals offering to provide data from more than 40 Earth Observation satellites to GMES Services over the next years. Accordingly the fleet of GMES contributing missions is constantly increasing.

ESA, the European Space Agency, is the coordinator of the space component of GMES and is ensuring the flow of Earth Observation data into GMES Services along with the access to these data. ESA received 12 proposals offering to provide data from more than 40 European and non-European Earth Observation satellites to GMES Services over the next years.
Thus, the fleet of GMES contributing missions is constantly increasing – the German 5-satellite RapidEye constellation remains as the latest mission, launched on 29 August 2008. Among other satellites there are ESA Member States’ missions, such as France’s Spot and Pleiades satellites, Germany’s TerraSAR-X, Italy’s CosmoSkyMed, the UK-led DMC constellation. ESA and EUMESAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) offer their data free of charge, while other agencies do favourable conditions to the GMES Services.

Thanks to harmonised protocols and standards developed by European Space Agencies through the Heterogeneous Mission Accessibility (HMA) Project, ESA is able to harmonise the data flow and data access.

Moreover, to ensure that GMES Services have quick, easy and coherent access to the data from all of the missions, ESA will provide a dedicated Data Access Portal where GMES Services can obtain relevant information and access the data products.

More information at:
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEMOBSO4KKF_LPgmes_0.html

Source GMES.Info