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(25 June 2015) MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has signed a contract for CA$7.4 million with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).

MDA will provide In-Service Support to maintain and operate Canada’s national ground station infrastructure at Inuvik, Prince Albert, and Gatineau. MDA will also be the exclusive supplier of hosting services to a global base of satellite operators wishing to install and operate antennas at the Inuvik Satellite Station Facility (ISSF) for satellite control and data reception. The ISSF receives satellite information that is used for environmental monitoring, security and surveillance, and natural resource development.

For Canada, the ISSF enhances the country’s ability to monitor the Arctic, increases social and economic development in the North, and provides Canadian and international users with expanded and more rapid access to Earth observation data.

The contract extends the strategic collaboration between MDA and Natural Resources Canada in service of the RADARSAT-2 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission programs. The contract also positions MDA to supply satellite commanding and reception systems and services to other satellite operators at the ISSF. Don Osborne, MDA’s group vice president of Information Systems, said, “The expanded collaboration with NRCan creates numerous opportunities and enables both MDA and the government to benefit from Canada’s continued investment in the North.”

“Canada’s satellite monitoring facilities contribute to environmental protection and help ensure the security and prosperity of all Canadians,” said the Honourable Greg Rickford, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources. “We are pleased to collaborate with MDA to ensure continued access to critical satellite data and optimize development of the Inuvik facility.”

About MDA

MDA is a global communications and information company providing operational solutions to commercial and government organizations worldwide.

MDA’s business is focused on markets and customers with strong repeat business potential, primarily in the Communications sector and the Surveillance and Intelligence sector. In addition, the Company conducts a significant amount of advanced technology development.

MDA’s established global customer base is served by more than 4,800 employees operating from 11 locations in the United States, Canada, and internationally.

The Company’s common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “MDA.”

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China launched a high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite Friday on top of a Long March 4B rocket, according to state media reports.

The Gaofen 8 satellite lifted off at 0622 GMT (2:22 a.m. EDT) from the Taiyuan space center in northern China’s Shanxi province. A 15-story Long March 4B rocket boosted the spacecraft into a near-circular orbit with an average altitude of around 473 kilometers, or 294 miles, according to U.S. military tracking data.

The orbit is inclined 97.3 degrees to the equator, and is similar to the orbit of China’s Yaogan 14 military spy satellite.

Friday’s launch occurred at 2:22 p.m. Beijing time.

Chinese officials said the Gaofen 8 satellite is part of a civilian program, joining the Gaofen 1 and Gaofen 2 Earth observation satellites launched from the Taiyuan space center in 2013 and 2014.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported imagery from Gaofen 8 will aid in general land surveys, land ownership evaluations, urban planning, road network planning, crop yield measurements, and responding to natural disasters.

The launch of Gaofen 8 was not officially announced in advance. Notices to pilots released Thursday outlining drop zones for the Long March rocket’s stages gave the first warning of an impending space launch.

Friday’s launch marked China’s second space launch of the year, and the 30th mission worldwide to successfully reach Earth orbit in 2015.

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SupremeSAT (Pvt) Ltd, a Sri Lanka-based satellite company, has broadened its scope to offer more services both locally and internationally after receiving the licence a few months ago for ‘International transit service’ from Sri Lanka’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), a company official said.

The company was an influential entity in the previous regime with Rohitha Rajapaksa, the former President’s son, employed in its technical division. He continues in that position.

“The company is encouraged by the recent modification of its license by the TRC which will let SupremeSAT make Sri Lanka compete for export earnings with regional Teleports based in countries such as Singapore and India,” Chairman and Owner of SupremeSAT – R. M. Manivannan told the Business Times.

“Assisted solely by the Chinese companies during the inception, SupremeSAT is now developing long term partnerships with globally renowned companies worldwide,” Mr. Manivannan said.

He noted that USA’s IntelSAT SA, Swedish Space Corporation, USA’s Orbcomm, Ericsson and Russia’s Dauria Aerospace are a few of the companies to be linked up with SupremeSAT.

Its Kandy Satellite Earth Station called the “South Asian Space Academy – SASA” will be opened within the next two months. This Pallekele facility will not only control and monitor the fleet of satellites but also offer all types of Teleport services to other international space companies.

“SASA will be a local nerve centre for space related Research, Development and Training and thus will act as one of South Asia’s most vibrant space activity centres,” he said.

With the growth and expansion in the Telecommunication Satellite and Teleport arenas, SupremeSAT is focusing on building a constellation of low earth observation satellites.

It intends to offer high quality, most frequent satellite imagery to the farmers in Asia and Africa on FOC terms using these low earth observation satellites.

SupremeSAT expects to partner with the Ministry of Agriculture and kick start this project as early as next month.

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(Jun 25, 2015) A key element of the partnership involves a major upgrade to Geoscience Australia’s Alice Springs satellite antenna which will see the station play a much more significant role in the international Landsat ground-station network.

On June 18, 2015 in Canberra, Australia, the U.S. Geological Survey and Geoscience Australia signed a comprehensive new partnership to maximize land remote sensing operations and data that can help to address issues of national and international significance.

“This partnership builds on a long history of collaboration between the USGS and Geoscience Australia and creates an exciting opportunity for us to pool resources across our organizations,” said Dr. Frank Kelly, USGS Space Policy Advisor and Director of the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center.

“We will work collaboratively to implement a shared vision for continental-scale monitoring of land surface change using time-series of Earth observations to detect change as it happens.”

Dr. Chris Pigram, Geoscience Australia’s Chief Executive Officer, also welcomed the agreement. “This new partnership elevates an already very strong relationship to a new level, and will see both organizations harness their respective skillsets to further unlock the deep understanding of our planet that the Landsat program provides.”

Dr. Kelly and Dr. Pigram both observed, “Our shared vision is to develop systems that enable us to monitor the Earth and detect change as it happens. The ability to do this will be critical to our ability to engage with major challenges like water security, agricultural productivity, and environmental sustainability.”

A key element of the partnership involves a major upgrade to Geoscience Australia’s Alice Springs satellite antenna which will see the station play a much more significant role in the international Landsat ground-station network.

Following this $3 million (AUD) upgrade committed to by the Australian Government, the Alice Springs antenna will transmit command-and-control signals to the Landsat satellites and support downloading of satellite imagery for the broader South East-Asia and Pacific region. Alice Springs will be one of only three international collaborator ground stations worldwide playing such a vital role in the Landsat program.

Dr. Kelly noted, “We are very pleased to see such a commitment from Australia to the future success and sustainability of the Landsat program. We appreciate the essential role that Australia continues to play in ensuring that Landsat data for this region is collected and then made available for societal benefit.”

The partnership will also include a strong focus on applying new science and ‘big data’ techniques, such as Geoscience Australia’s Geoscience Data Cube and the USGS’s land change monitoring, assessment, and projection capability, to help users unlock the full value of the data from the Landsat program.

Dr. Suzette Kimball, acting Director of the USGS, recently noted, “We are now beginning to see that the combination of high performance computing, data storage facilities, data preparation techniques, and advanced systems can materially accelerate the value of Landsat data.”

Dr. Kimball added, “By lowering barriers to this technology, we can enable government, research and industry users in the United States and Australia, as well as the broader world, to realize the full benefits of this open-access and freely available data.”

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[SatNews] The tremendous amounts of data produced by the European Earth observation program Copernicus and its Sentinel satellites hugely benefit science and public authorities and open the door to countless products and applications in a wide array of business sectors.

The annual Earth Monitoring competition Copernicus Masters was initiated to aid visionary entrepreneurs in bringing their innovations to market. Its CloudEO Going Live Challenge is now calling for proposals for EO-related products and services that are ready to be tested and implemented. Areas of special interest include ice detection, agriculture and forestry, oil, gas & mining, maritime, and radar applications.

Entrants are invited to submit a concrete plan for using CloudEO’s ecosystem to transform partially or fully developed applications based on Earth observation data into operational commercial services. After an initial evaluation by an expert panel, the top three contestants will be rewarded with the opportunity to conduct a reality check trial at the CloudEO Living Lab along with relevant user communities and potential future customers.

CloudEO is offering a powerful cloud-based hard- and software infrastructure, access to great data, an easy-to-use collaboration platform, sophisticated streaming services, a web store as a marketing tool, and CloudEO’s coaching and matchmaking support. The best service implementation will be awarded as the winner of the Copernicus Masters CloudEO—Going Live Challenge with a prize package worth up to 10,000 euros.

The winner of the challenge is also running for the overall winner—the Copernicus Master—who will receive (along with their challenge prize) 20,000 euros in cash and a satellite data package worth a further 60,000 euros, which is being provided with the financial support of the European Commission.

The Copernicus Master CloudEO The Going Live Challenge is open for online submission until the July 13th of this year. All winners will be announced on October 20, 2015, and recognized as part of an awards ceremony in Berlin.

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ESA and CNES are pleased to announce that the new distribution site for SPOT-5 (Take 5) products is now open. The site also provides SPOT-4 (Take 5) data.

The experiment, co-funded by ESA and CNES, made SPOT-5 able to acquire data over 150 selected sites every 5 days under constant angles for a duration of around 5 months over the majority of the vegetation phase (April to August 2015). These time series will be made available very soon to the scientific community to support the development of time series analysis in preparation for the exploitation of the Sentinel-2 mission.

Images acquired during the SPOT-5 Take 5 experiment are processed at level 1C (orthorectified, TOA) and level 2A (orthorectified, BOA) 10 metres resolution. They will be available 3 weeks after sensing time.

Further information about the dataset is available on the SPOT-5 Take 5 description page

The product can be accessed from the SPOT Take 5 portal

All the SPOT-4 (Take 5) data are already available. SPOT-5 (Take 5) products will be ingested from next week on.

Data is accessible under free and open licence conditions upon user registration.

Sources

BRUSSELS, June 24 (Xinhua) — Increased collaboration between Belgium and China in the field of satellite technology can put both nations “at the forefront” of delivering vital information globally, according to State Secretary of Science Policy Elke Sleurs.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and China National Space Administration (CNSA) in the field of space sciences, technologies and applications was signed in Beijing on Tuesday.

In the pipeline is the Earth Observation program, which aims to design and build a joint Belgian-Chinese satellite mission “with the full potential to put both nations at the forefront in delivering exclusive agricultural and environmental information worldwide,” said Sleurs in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

The two countries have enjoyed a history of co-operation in the areas of science and technology, which is set to increase in the future, according to Sleurs.

“Building on the scientific co-operation between Belgian and Chinese scientists of the past years, especially in the field of the application of earth observation data for environmental monitoring, the idea grew to also involve technological and industrial partners in the co-operation,” Sleurs said.

For over 20 years, federal science policy of Belgium has supported the promotion of research projects between Belgian and Chinese universities, said Sleurs, as well as funding joint research projects with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.
bq. “I hope that more initiatives will follow,” said Sleurs, “so that both nations can demonstrate their unique competencies to Europe and the international world.”

More recently, specific focus has been given to projects dealing with remote sensing technologies, and the development of applications to monitor the state of the environment and agricultural land use, Sleurs said.

Science and technology is a key industry in Belgium. In 2014, the aeronautics and space industry in the country grew by 6 percent, while the federal government aims to devote 3 percent of its GDP to research and development.

“Belgium has set an objective of increasing the economic efforts of space research by enhancing SME participation in the space industry via technological and scientific support programs,” says Sleurs.

Belgium’s overall activities in the space sector represent an annual turnover of about 350 million euros (392 million U.S dollars), representing almost 2,000 high-quality jobs, she said. Enditem

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The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos plans to expand its fleet of satellites for taking images of the Earth, as part of a project to create a new center for global imaging, which aims to become a major player in Earth remote sensing services.

The existing Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring, part of the Russian Space Systems holding, will become the core of the new structure, which between 2016 and 2025 aims to increase its fleet of satellites to as many as 20.

A spokesman for Roscosmos told the Russian daily newspaper Izvestiya that the project will finance improvements to its resources by meeting commercial orders for imagery from foreign states and private companies.

“In setting up the center for remote Earth sensing, we are not only aiming to meet existing demand from Russian clients,” explained a Roscosmos representative, adding that at the moment, the provision of imaging to clients for free causes the quality of imaging to suffer from a lack of investment.

“To this end, we plan to alter, to some degree, the scheme for cooperating with government customers. The idea is that they don’t get absolutely everything for free, but pay in part for the work of the center, such as the processing of the images.”

“This will allow us to increase our competitiveness in the global satellite imaging market.”

The current fleet of satellite imaging equipment held by the Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring comprises two Resurs-P and one Resurs-DK1 satellites, capable of acquiring imaging with a resolution of up to one meter, one Kanopus-B with a resolution of images of up to two meters, and three meteorological units.

Images from the Resurs-P satellites are used by Russian government ministries, including the Emergencies Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Environment Ministry.

At the moment, said the spokesman, commercial clients are only able to order images from the Resurs-DK1 satellite, the oldest in the fleet, which was launched in 2006. As a result, private companies such as the Russian internet services firm Yandex turn to commercial providers of satellite imagery, which get their data from foreign as well as Russian satellites.

Improvements to the satellite fleet have already been set in motion for the coming years, said the spokesman. Work on the production of the Obzor-O four-satellite constellation system will begin in 2016, and another Resurs-P satellite is set for launch this year.

Source: Sputnik News

This is the 4th edition in the series.
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Firm collaborates with research scientists to map environmental calamity

Ecometrica, the world-leading sustainability software and data company, has partnered with scientists at Edinburgh Napier and other universities to build an application that will help developing world governments ensure their economic growth is ecologically sustainable.

The application, hosted on the Ecometrica Platform, collates satellite imagery to show the scale of environmental degradation to mangrove forests over time, and is being used to highlight the need for a new model of shrimp farming in the Indian Ocean and plan a more sustainable approach.

An integral part of iCoast, a research project led by Edinburgh Napier University, the publicly available tool allows the changes that have taken place to be tracked on a map. The project has collated satellite imagery of the Kenyan and Sri Lankan coastlines for a variety of dates over the last two decades and starkly illustrates how the Kalpitiya-Puttalam lagoon, part of Sri Lanka’s 1,700km coastline, has experienced rapid conversion of natural habitat to shrimp ponds over the past 20 years.

The conversion of mangrove forests into shrimp ponds has dramatically changed this site within the coastal landscape in Sri Lanka, leaving local communities at greater risk from extreme weather events like flooding and tsunamis which the mangrove belt has traditionally protected them from. Mangroves also provide habitat for marine animals such as crabs, shrimps and juvenile fish, as well as locking in large amounts of carbon.

The data also showed that the shrimp farms are generally abandoned after just a few years because of the incidence of disease in the pools, leaving a scarred landscape that is difficult for natural species to re-colonise.

Karin Viergever, Ecometrica’s head of land use and spatial analysis, and her team helped to build the application alongside iCoast’s academics, using Ecometrica Platform’s Mapping modules. She said: “The application can be accessed from anywhere in the world, and provides clear visual documentation of the damage being wrought by unsustainable farming methods. With data to show what is happening over time, it should now be possible for policymakers to steer development in a more sustainable direction.”

She added: “Our web platform allows similar maps to be built for other areas, and is already being used across a variety of projects.”

As well as mapping changes in the environment of a major wetland site in Sri Lanka since 1992, the iCoast project looked at the potential for climate compatible development (CCD) in the coastal zone and aimed to identify the right policy and regulatory framework to set coastal farming in Kenya and Sri Lanka on a more sustainable path. As part of the iCoast programme, two Sri Lankan professionals came to Scotland to train on Ecometrica’s application, and they have now returned to their native country where they will be demonstrating it to policymakers.

Professor Mark Huxham of Edinburgh Napier University, one of the leaders of the iCoast project, said: “Our study highlights the need for integrated planning in coastal areas, particularly in mangrove forests which are of huge importance for their ability to protect the coast and their tremendous ability to capture and store carbon.

“In Sri Lanka’s Puttalam Lagoon, one of the areas studied, shrimp farming increased by 2,777 per cent between 1992 and 2012, with mangroves declining by 34 per cent. But by the end of the period, most of the shrimp farms had been abandoned. None of this is sustainable, and there is now a pressing need to rehabilitate the abandoned ponds.

“There remain significant challenges in developing the right fiscal and regulatory frameworks required to deliver the incentives and governance conditions necessary for coastal zone CCD to occur through these emerging Payment for Ecosystem Services markets. Data from earth observation and mapping have huge potential to positively inform regulatory decisions, and technology such as the Ecometrica Mapping platform make applications usable and accessible to local stakeholders and policy makers.”

The iCoast project was funded by the Climate & Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) and carried out by Edinburgh Napier University, LTS International, University of Birmingham in the UK, the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), and Ruhuna University in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with Ecometrica. All satellite data was donated to the project by Planet Action. The application is available on https://icoast.ourecosystem.com

Ends

Attached ‘Puttalam 17 Nov 2007.jpg’ picture caption:

Zoomed excerpt of image taken by SPOT satellite on 17 November 2007. The angular shapes are used (dark coloured, showing the presence of water) and disused (bright coloured) shrimp ponds. The large light blue-coloured patch towards the bottom of the picture represents salt pans while on the opposite side of the pond, the light red patch shows a coconut plantation. Dark red patches close to the water around the bay and on the islands indicate the presence of mangrove vegetation. © CNES 2007, Distribution Spot Image S.A., France, all rights reserved.

Vegetation is shown in red, as the satellite acquires near-infrared wavelengths additional to colour wavelengths. Since healthy vegetation reflects a lot of near infrared, this information can be used to monitor vegetation health. Showing near infrared reflectance in red makes healthy vegetation appear red.

Distributed by The Communications Business on behalf of Ecometrica.

For further information, please contact Denise Hannestad, The Communications Business on behalf of Ecometrica. Tel +44 (0) 131 208 1500 or DeniseH@thecommunicationsbusiness.com

Editors Notes

About Ecometrica

Ecometrica is a leading sustainability software and data company with offices in the UK, USA and Canada. We provide sustainability, mapping and reporting software to governments, NGOs and some of the world’s biggest and most complex multi-national businesses. The Ecometrica platform brings together innovative sustainability software and a team of recognised experts in sustainability data and reporting

Ecometrica is one of the most recognised sustainability management brands in the world, as voted by the Global 500. In 2013 and 2014 global surveys of senior environment, health and safety (EH&S) and sustainability decision makers, conducted by the analyst firm, Verdantix, Ecometrica was ranked as a leading brand for both EH&S and Sustainability Management Services, alongside companies like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and SAP.

Following an independent review by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ecometrica became the first sustainability management company to secure assurance of audit readiness in line with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements 3000, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales’ Code of Ethics, for the Ecometrica platform.