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Human civilization is having a dramatic impact on Planet Earth and for several decades there has been a growing need to minimize the negative impacts of man’s activities alongside supporting sustainable improvements in social and economic well-being.

The scale of the challenge requires us to understand what is happening to the planet on a range of scales, from the local to the global, and Earth observation provides a unique capability to provide knowledge across this range.

From the first Earth observation (EO) satellite launch in 1960 to the upcoming launch of a whole fleet of new EO satellites in the Copernicus programme1, the remote sensing technologies used to observe the Earth have been increasing rapidly in range and technical sophistication. While the public may be most familiar with optical imaging capabilities such as Google Earth2, a wide range of other sensing modalities are used to monitor and measure the Earth, mainly in the radio-wave, microwave, infrared, and optical parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Between them these sensing modalities are rapidly increasing our understanding of Planet Earth and the impact human civilisation is having.

The UK Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) has been driving the next generations of technology in this field for many years. CEOI’s activities have so far focused on the early stages of instrument development, supporting projects to develop new instrument concepts, prove technical capabilities, and raise technology readiness levels. In addition to projects which increase instrument performance, there is a strong focus on reducing the size, weight and cost. The EO instrument is only one element of an EO mission and the reduction in size and weight can enable several instruments to be flown on the same satellite, or dramatically reduce the cost of launching the satellite.

As with all such programmes, progress is often both evolutionary and revolutionary and CEOI is supporting the evaluation of a range of innovative new mission and instrument concepts that could transform our ability to understand what is happening to Planet Earth. These include:

  • The Wavemill mission concept for a hybrid interferometric SAR instrument, measuring ocean dynamic properties such as ocean currents.
  • New Doppler radar concepts to provide information about the three dimensional nature of clouds and precipitation microphysics
  • A geosynchronous radar mission giving real time data on events on land (e.g. landslides), and in the atmosphere (for weather forecasting).
  • Miniature laser heterodyne radiometer for monitoring atmospheric gases such as CO2, CO, NO, O3.
  • Low cost THz sounder for measuring gases in the upper atmosphere, especially the concentration of key gases such as atomic O, OH, H2O, NO.
  • Novel multi-wavelength photon counting lidar system which will give more accurate and informative data on forest canopies.
  • Methane emission imager using discrete shortwave infrared spectral bands.
  • Ultra-compact air quality mapper using an artificial neural network and differential optical absorption spectroscopy.

In addition to improving the performance of remote sensing instruments in space, the work of CEOI in reducing size and weight is opening up new markets and applications for these instruments. Satellites are only one of several platforms on which remote sensing instruments can be deployed. There are a range of airborne, ground based and seaborne platforms that can be used depending on the application.

This change is already happening in ground based remote sensing applications. Optical absorption spectroscopy instruments, originally developed to understand atmospheric chemistry with observations from space, have now been deployed on the ground to measure city-wide air quality. And new laser heterodyne radiometers with very high sensitivity can be built into instruments that are able to detect explosives at a distance of tens of meters, giving the security forces valuable new tools in the fight against terrorism.

Aircraft based applications for remote sensing, such as gravity gradiometry and ground penetrating radar, have been around for over 10 years. But now aircraft as a platform are being challenged by the rapid development in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities, which is allowing their transition from military to civilian applications. UAVs have significant advantages over aircraft in cost, deployability, and use in ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ applications. Combining UAVs with the next generation of smaller, lighter, remote sensing instruments for EO will open up a wide range of new applications and markets. It is highly unlikely that UAV based remote sensing instruments will replace satellite based ones, as each platform has significant advantages and disadvantages. When these are mapped, it is surprising how complementary they are to each other, opening up the likelihood of them working together collaboratively to meet future applications and market needs.

As human civilisation has an increasing impact on Planet Earth and globalisation more closely entwines our futures, EO instrumentation, whether deployed on satellites, UAVs, or ground based installations, is likely to be used in an increasing range of applications. Emerging markets include Fire & Rescue, precision farming, disaster monitoring, inspection of critical infrastructure, geo-physical surveys, and environmental monitoring. Future markets are likely to arise in the fields of civil development, natural resources, disasters, environment, energy, and people.

The Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) is working with the Satellite Applications Catapult3 to identify the priority future markets which can benefit from Earth observation data. The CEOI is funding a wide range of innovative new instruments that measure our weather, our atmosphere, the icecaps, and many other aspects of the natural environment. Many of these are finding fascinating new applications in everyday life.

Further information about these projects and others funded by the CEOI can be found at www.ceoi.ac.uk. You can also contact CEOI Director, Professor Mick Johnson: Tel: +44 (0)1438 774421 or email: mick.johnson@astrium.eads.net for more technical information on the projects and Robin Higgons: Tel +44 1223 422404 or email: robin.higgons@qi3.co.uk for information on new applications and markets.

(1) Copernicus, previously known as GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), is the European Programme for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation http://www.copernicus.eu/.
(2) Trade Mark of Google Inc.
(3) The Satellite Applications Catapult is a new type of independent innovation and technology company, created by the Technology Stategy Board to foster growth across the economy through the exploitation of space. They help organisations make use of and benefit from satellite technologies, and bring together multi-disciplinary teams to generate ideas and solutions in an open innovation environment.

“Source”:http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/geodataconvergence/2013/11/20/todays-geospatial-solutions-help-the-oil-and-gas-industry-manage-infrastructure-in-remote-environments/


An article by the Swarm mission team.
Contact point: Rune Floberghagen (ESA Swarm Mission Manager) and Giuseppe Ottavianelli (ESA Swarm Sensors Performance, Products and Algorithms Manager)

A mission to explore the Earth’s magnetic field

Following 8 years of development, scientific research, verification and validation tests, last Friday three new Earth Observation satellites have been launched by the European Space Agency to explore the Earth’s magnetic field in unprecedented detail. This is the Swarm mission, originally proposed by a consortium led by Eigil Friis-Christensen (DTU Space, Denmark), Hermann Lühr (GFZ Potsdam, Germany) and Gauthier Hulot (IPGP, France).
Earth’s magnetic feel is something we do not see nor feel. Apart from the fascinating images of the aurora lights, the popular magnetic bracelets of dubious effectiveness, the entertaining fridge magnets and the occasional use of our smartphone compass, we do not seem to often interact with the magnetic field in our daily life. It is indeed rare to think about the magnetic field lines and the constant changing Earth’s magnetic flux during our busy days. Despite this, the Earth’s magnetic field is one of the most fascinating elements of our planet. This acts as a protective shield from charged particles from the Sun that stream towards Earth. It is essential for life itself and it has a strong influence on the evolution of the climate.

In short term time scales, such Sun-Earth interaction can also generate extreme global phenomena such as magnetic storms. One example is the notorious “Halloween Storm” that occurred on 29th October 2003. The magnetic direction at the poles rapidly changed more than 20 degrees and auroras were seen as low as 30 degrees of latitudes. The storm disrupted technological systems around the world. For example, over-the-horizon radio communication was disturbed and forced cancellation of airline polar routes. Civilian and military satellites were partially damaged. The geomagnetic orientation used for directional drilling for oil and gas was halted. GPS accuracy was degraded affecting commercial and military aircraft navigation. Astronauts took precautionary actions to avoid excessive levels of radiation. And geomagnetic induced currents in the Earth’s crust caused stress in the electric-power grids and even black outs from South Africa to Japan.

This confirms how the geomagnetic field is of uttermost importance for our Earth system and environment both in long and short time scales and as such it makes this three-spacecraft mission of great interest for science and the public at large.

Developed on behalf of ESA by an industrial consortium led by EADS Astrium GmbH, the three satellites, each 9.26 m long (with the boom fully deployed) and weighting 473 kg at launch (including 106 kg of Freon propellant), are all carrying the same payload and will together provide new insights into many natural processes related to Earth’s magnetic field: from those occurring deep inside the planet to the near-Earth electromagnetic environment and the influences of the solar wind.


Photo: ESA

The payload and the mission orbits

Each of the three Swarm satellites will make high-precision and high-resolution measurements of the strength, direction and variation of the magnetic field, complemented by precise navigation, accelerometer, plasma and electric field measurements.
The two main instruments of Swarm are the Absolute Scalar Magnetometer (ASM) and the Vector Field Magnetometer (VFM). They will provide absolute and vector measurements of the magnetic field. Magnetic sensors measure a combination of the core field tangled with others from magnetised rocks in the crust, electrical currents flowing in the ionosphere, magnetosphere and oceans, and currents induced by external fields inside Earth’s mantle.

The challenge is to separate the individual magnetic field sources, each with their own characteristics in strength, space and time. To achieve this the satellites will be placed into specific orbits. Two satellites will fly side by side (separation in longitude at the equator equivalent to about 150 km) in near polar orbits at an altitude of 460 km at the beginning of life, with an inclination of 87.35°. One satellite in high polar orbit at an altitude of 530 km at the beginning of life, with a 87.95° inclination. They are not Sun-synchronous orbits and as such, they allow the satellites to move rapidly through local time. All local times (24h) will be covered over a period that doesn’t coincide with any seasonal variations, which makes it possible to study seasonal processes. And the almost circular and near-polar orbit enables a homogeneous and almost complete global coverage of the Earth.

The two lower pairs will be affected equally by the magnetosphere and ionosphere, and hence the differences detected in their measurements can be assumed to origin from very local effects of the Earth’s crust, mantle and core. Moreover, over the course of the mission, the orbit of the higher satellite will drift and after 4 years it will cross the path of the two lower satellites at an angle of 90°. Collecting data that is with different contributions, the higher satellite will enable to discriminate large-scale external sources of magnetic influence from Earth “fixed” ones.

The mission is intended to last at least four years and the combination of results from Swarm with previous missions and a possible extension beyond four years will enable a good separation between the secular variation of the core field and the influence on these time scales of the solar cycles.

The payload on each satellite also include GPS receivers, an accelerometer and an electric field instrument (EFI) that will deliver supplementary information to study the interaction of Earth’s magnetic field with the solar wind.

In details
Absolute Scalar Magnetometer (ASM)
This novel instrument will measure the magnetic field to an accuracy greater than any other magnetometer. The ASM is an ‘optically pumped metastable helium-4 magnetometer’, developed and manufactured by CEA-LETI in Grenoble (France) under contract with CNES Toulouse. It provides scalar measurements of the magnetic field for the calibration of the vector field magnetometer using a technique based on enhancing the magnetic resonance signal of helium atoms with a tuneable laser at 1083 nm.
Vector Field Magnetometer (VFM)
This core instrument will make high-precision measurements of Earth’s magnetic field vector components. It was developed and manufactured at the Technical University of Denmark based on heritage from many previous satellite missions as well as sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons.
Startracker assembly
This unit provides high-precision attitude data, primarily needed to determine the orientation of the magnetic field vector measured by the Vector Field Magnetometer. The attitude information is also used by the satellite’s attitude and orbital control system to establish a fine-pointing mode during normal operations and the orientation of other instruments. This latest generation of startracker was developed and manufactured at the Technical University of Denmark, based on heritage from many previous satellite missions.
Micro-accelerometer
These units will measure the satellites’ non-gravitational accelerations in their respective orbits, which in turn will provide information about air drag and solar wind forces. Air density models will be derived from these products and will be used together with magnetic data to obtain new insights on the geomagnetic forcing of the upper atmosphere. The instrument was designed and manufactured by VZLU (Czech Republic) supported by Czech subcontractors – the first time that ESA has contracted an instrument of this complexity to Czech industry.
Electrical Field Instrument (EFI)
To characterise the electric field around Earth, this instrument will measure plasma density, drift and acceleration at high resolution. It is the first ever three-dimensional ionospheric imager in orbit, with an ingenious thermal ion imager design from the University of Calgary (Canada) and a unique concept for the sensors of the Langmuir probe from IRFU, Uppsala (Sweden). The instrument was developed by ComDev (Canada) with scientific support of the University of Calgary for the thermal ion imager sensors. The power supplies were developed by CAEN SpA (Italy). A Langmuir probe assembly is included with the instrument to provide measurement of electron density, electron temperature and spacecraft potential.
GPS and laser retroreflector
The precise orbit determination of the Swarm satellites will rely on the data of the GPS receiver. Each satellite is equipped with a laser retroreflector to validate the GPS system. Swarm is supported by the International Laser Ranging Service that provides satellite laser-ranging observation data from a network of stations around the world. The GPS receiver (RUAG, Austria) is used firstly as the orbit sensor to provide a real-time navigation solution (position, velocity and time) to the attitude and orbit control system and secondly as a sensor generating raw measurements data (code and carrier phases) as required for precise orbit determination and total electron content measurements. The laser retroreflector for Swarm was procured as a rebuild of existing ones from the GeoForschungs Zentrum Potsdam, that have been used on previous satellite missions such as CHAMP, GRACE and TerraSAR-X.

Mission facts and Data Access

  • Updated information about the mission can be found on the link
  • Data will be freely available. More info on

ESA videos

The online audience of the Copernicus Masters website has voted HAB Forecast – Harmful Algal Bloom Forecast this year’s most beneficial Earth-monitoring service for European citizens. The service provides a weekly alert primarily dedicated to fish farmers and regulators via web bulletin

It is the first forecast system of this kind and designed to combine all available information from Earth (in-situ monitoring stations), space (satellite data) and in-silico (biological and physical oceanic models) sources. The service, which is part of the FP7 project ASIMUTH, was submitted by Julie Maguire for the Irish Daithi O’Murchu Marine Research Station. ASIMUTH is using products from the pre-operational marine service of Copernicus that is currently provided through the EU-funded project MyOcean2

The Best Service Challenge is one of nine categories in the European Earth monitoring competition Copernicus Masters. It invites service providers to upload profiles of their existing services within the main thematic areas of the European Earth observation programme Copernicus to the competition website for a public voting. The Best Service Challenge aims to increase awareness of existing Earth monitoring services and their benefits to European citizens.

As the winner of the Best Service Challenge 2013, HAB Forecast will benefit from a substantial satellite data quota worth EUR 40,000 made available with financial support by the European Commission.

Coming second in the voting was Landmap – Spatial Discovery. This service, which provides web-based access to spatial data and e-learning materials for the academic community, was submitted by Gail Millin-Chalabi for Mimas – at the University of Manchester.

Taking the third place, meanwhile, was SmartIrrigation – satellite monitoring for agriculture. Submitted by Elizabeth Gil-Roldán for Starlab Barcelona SL, this service provides farmers with a tool for optimising agricultural production through efficient irrigation based on the combination of remote sensing data and measurements from in-situ sensors.

All of the other winners of this year’s Copernicus Masters will be announced at the official Awards Ceremony on 5 November 2013 in line with the www.space-solutions.eu Conference 2013.
The overall winner – the Copernicus Master – will be selected from among the winners of the Challenges. He will receive an additional cash prize of EUR 20,000 and benefit from EUR 60,000 in satellite data, made available with financial support by the European Commission.
All of the winners of the Copernicus Masters will be published on the competition website by 6 November 2013.
To know more about the Copernicus Masters Best Service Challenge, please visit www.copernicus-masters.com
Source Copernicus.info

(August 2013) South Korea’s new multipurpose satellite sent beacon signals to a ground station in Antarctica after its launch from Yasny, Russia, on Thursday, indicating that the satellite successfully reached its target altitude and orbit, officials have said.

The Korea Multipurpose Satellite-5 (KOMSAT-5) was launched at 8:39 p.m. (11:39 p.m. Korean time) from Russia’s Yasny launch base, located some 1,800 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

“The launch vehicle successfully deployed the satellite approximately 15 minutes after its launch from the Yasny launch base,” Lee Sang-ryool, an official from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) in charge of the KOMSAT-5 program, told reporters earlier. “Troll Satellite Station in Antarctica received beacon signals from KOMSAT-5 32 minutes after its launch,” Lee said.

Beacon signals were again picked up by Norway’s Svalbard Satellite Station at 10:06 p.m., further indicating the satellite’s successful deployment into its target orbit, according to KARI officials. Whether the satellite was successfully deployed and is functioning properly will be verified later when the satellite makes a radio contact with South Korea’s ground station in Daejeon at 2:35 a.m. on Friday, or five hours and 56 minutes after the launch, they said.

The satellite, also known as the Arirang 5, was sent into space using Russia’s Dnepr, a space launch vehicle converted from Russia’s Soviet-era intercontinental ballistic missile.

KOMSAT-5 is South Korea’s fourth multipurpose satellite, but it is the first with synthetic aperture radar with a 1-meter resolution, which will allow observation of the Earth’s surface, especially the Korean Peninsula, regardless of weather conditions. It will circle the Earth 15 times a day in the sun-synchronous orbit, or dawn-to-dusk orbit, for the next five years. (Source: GlobalPost.)

Satnews

The start of the European Union’s Multiannual Financial Framework for the years 2014-2020 is the perfect time to examine the future of the European Union in Space.

WHEN?: 28 & 29 January 2014
WHERE?: European Commission, Charlemagne Building, Brussels (Belgium)
WHAT?: 6th Edition of the high-level Conference on EU Space Policy

At the beginning of next year, the overall framework should be established, including the long-term budgets that are to be allocated to current EU space programmes, along with the legal instruments that are to guide them. The negotiations are not closed yet, of course. Nevertheless, the time will soon come to implement these new means that are to be placed at the disposal of the European space sector. It is therefore necessary to also examine the technological, industrial and political challenges that will arise as we head towards 2020, in light of the increasingly sophisticated and critical services that are expected to be developed in the space sector, as well as the many questions raised by their joint civil and security dual-use, and to begin to debate the delicate and important choices that will no doubt need to be made to meet those challenges.

There is no lack of new medium- and long-term issues that need to be addressed:

European space industry: facing the challenge of competitiveness

Adoption and practical implementation of the proposals tabled in the European Commission Communication on EU Space Industrial Policy, and its links with other EU initiatives such as Horizon 2020 in order to foster commercial markets, and ensure a level playing field in the global marketplace and with others stakeholders, including agencies and industry bodies.

International dimension of EU space policy: partnerships and cooperation

EGNSS cooperation agreements, GEOSS, programmatic agreements with third countries, etc.

The growing role for satellite telecommunications, and new challenges for operators

Participation in e-society, links with EU regional policy, increasing role in security and defence, contribution of the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’ and the ‘Horizon 2020’ programme, growing competition internationally for frequencies and markets, etc

Civil/security & defence: the dual dimension of space services and activities

Outcome of the December 2013 European Council dedicated to Common Security and Defence Policy and the specific sectoral industrial policy.

New challenges for space

SST, space debris removal, space sciences, exploration, societal challenges, etc.

EU space programmes: prospective state-of-play

• Galileo: completion of the constellation, technological choices for the next generation of satellites, etc.;
• Copernicus/GMES: development of the space and in-situ components, management of data policy, etc.;
• Operational Space Infrastructure Operators: dividing up management tasks;
• Launchers: development of policy, etc.

WHO?

This event will offer a unique opportunity for an informative debate between the main political and industry decision-makers, bringing together representatives of national and European institutions, bodies, agencies, industry, research centres and civil society.

ORGANISED IN COLLABORATION WITH:

The European Commission, the European Parliament and its Sky and Space Intergroup, the European Council, the European Space Agency, Eurospace, and key actors from the space industry and space-user sectors.

(10 October 2013) After nearly tripling its planned lifetime, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer – GOCE – is nearing its end of mission and will soon reenter our atmosphere.

With a sleek, aerodynamic design responsible for it being dubbed the ‘Ferrari of space’, GOCE has mapped variations in Earth’s gravity with extreme detail. Scientists further exploited these data to create the first global high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle – called the Moho – and to detect sound waves from the massive earthquake that hit Japan on 11 March 2011, among other results.

In mid-October, the mission will come to a natural end when it runs out of fuel and the satellite begins its descent towards Earth from a height of about 224 km.

(source: ESA)

ESA was invited to visit the Asian Development (ADB) on 13+14 June, to promote awareness of European EO capabilities and discuss potential collaboration. The ADB expressed an interest in knowing more about what Europe could offer in the domains of Ecosystems/Agriculture, Forestry/Mining, Urban, GeoHazards/Risks, Maritime Surveillance, Climate Resilience & Proofing.

The first day (13 June) consisted of seminars that addressed these themes. For these seminars, ESA took representative EO service providers specialised on these domains to present the capabilities of European and Canadian Industry. These companies comprised : GeoVille (A), GAF (D), GISAT (Czech), TRE (I), CLS (F), and Hatfield Consultants ©. In addition, the Secretary General of EARSC gave a broader overview of the European EO service sector.

On the second day, ESA had separate meetings with senior ADB personnel. These included the Directors of all 5 geographic operating regions of ADB, together with the Director of Policy and Strategy, and the Deputy Director General of Regional Sustainable Development. The visit was extremely positive and concluded with ADB expressing strong support to further collaborate with ESA to assess the value of European EO capabilities for ADB activities.

For further details on the discussions held, please see 20130613_ESA_ADB_visit_notes_FINAL.pdf

Dialogue continues between ESA and ADB staff regarding requirements for EO-based information in support of bank activities. Some 38 candidate bank projects are being investigated across all 6 geographic regions of bank operations, with the types of information required falling in the following basic categories :

  • urban development (13),
  • water resources (10),
  • climate change (8),
  • agriculture and rural development (5),
  • forestry (4),
  • disaster risk (4),
  • marine and coastal environment (6),
  • energy and natural resource extraction (4)

Given this large interest from ADB, the aim is to finalise the requirements for 10 ADB projects that can be supported by EO-based information. The geo-information requirements of the selected Bank projects will form input to the ITT that ESA will release for the European and Canadian EO service suppliers to respond to in December of 2013.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the World Bank have been collaborating under the umbrella of the “Earth Observation for Development” initiative – branded eoworld – since 2008. In 2013 ESA and the World Bank have entered into a new phase of collaboration for a further 3 years to place greater emphasis on mainstreaming EO information into World Bank operational activities.

In this context, a second internal ‘Call for Projects’ was opened within the World Bank between July 8 and September 9. The purpose of this Call is to identify on-going international development projects of the World Bank, where there are current key requirements for additional geo-information needed for the planning, implementation or monitoring of the project activity. The Call has prioritized 4 thematic sectors identified as: urban development, disaster risk management, forestry and oceans. However, the submissions on other thematic areas were also welcomed including operations in fragile and conflict-affected states, ecosystems services, extractive industries, renewable energy, and insurance and reinsurance sector, as well as capacity building in water resources management.

A total of 38 responses were submitted by Bank project teams across all 6 geographic regions of operations, in the following broad sectors / themes of development activity :

  • forestry, agriculture and rural development (11),
  • water (8),
  • urban (5),
  • transport (2),
  • oceans including coastal (4),
  • disaster risk management (4),
  • health (2),
  • ICT development (1),
  • climate change (1).

Regarding the types of geo-information requested, these are spanning a broad range:

  • Land/Environment (6),
  • Land/Forest (7),
  • Land/Mapping (7),
  • Land/Risks (6),
  • Land/Water-Snow (6),
  • Ocean (3),
  • Atmospheric/Air Quality (1),
  • Climate change Info Services (1),
  • Several (1).
    Note that Land/Risks includes the topic coastal zone management (coastal erosion).

ESA is currently assessing the responses on specific criteria: the scope of the geo-information requirements specified, the feasibility of EO to satisfy them and the overall relevance of EO for the design and implementation of the Bank project and the linkage to the programs and initiatives. Once complete, ESA and World Bank will jointly select 12-15 Bank projects that can be supported by EO-based information. The geo-information requirements of the selected Bank projects will form input to the ITT that ESA will release for the European and Canadian EO service suppliers to respond to in November / December of 2013 .

The World Bank has been promoting the collaboration with ESA; with article that has been on the home page in august and can be seen at the following link

(October 08) The European Space Agency is in the countdown phase to one of the highlights of its scientific year: the launch of its three-spacecraft Swarm mission to study the Earth€™s magnetic field in unprecedented detail.

Having arrived at Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Archangel, about 800km north of Moscow, in separate Ilyushin Il-76 transport flights from Munich, the three 500kg Astrium-built spacecraft are now being fuelled and integrated with a single Rockot launcher for their 14 November trip to orbit.

One aloft, the trio €“ flying in rough formation €“ will independently measure the Earth€™s magnetic field strength. Scientists on the ground will pore over the differences between their measurements, rather than merely their absolute values, in a bid to disentangle the contribution to the magnetic field of the Earth€™s rotating, liquid core, its mantle, crust and oceans, the upper atmosphere region known as the ionosphere, and the interaction between the Solar wind and the ionosphere€™s outer shell, the magnetosphere.

The scientific objective is to better understand how the Earth€™s magnetic field is generated, how it varies around the globe and why this field that protects us from space weather appears to be weakening. To achieve that aim, ESA and prime contractor Astrium have had to employ some unusual design tricks.

As with all missions to space, Swarm must survive launch. But, says mission manager Rune Floberghagen, with all three identical 468kg craft closely packed to fit on one launcher, there is an additional risk of collision in the first few seconds after release.

Although Swarm is ESA€™s first constellation mission, once it is in space and clear of the Rockot launch vehicle, navigation becomes a €œrelatively flexible€ concern and orbital manoeuvres to the three spacecraft can be carried out independently, says Floberghagen. Two of the satellites will initially orbit essentially side by side around the poles at an altitude of 460km, while the third flies about 80km higher. The lower pair need only be kept within about 1.4Ëš latitude of each other. Being at the same altitude and close in horizontal position, says Floberghagen, it can be assumed that they will be affected equally by the magnetosphere and ionosphere, and hence those critical differences between the measurements they take can be assumed to stem from very local effects of the Earth€™s crust, mantle and core.

However, he says, what is important is that their along-track separation is watched very closely. As these lower two will be on approximately the same orbital plane, they could collide over the poles if one is not kept about 10s ahead of the other €“ which translates into a gap of 70-80km. Beyond that, the relative positions of the three satellites are only roughly important; what is critical that ESA knows exactly where each one of them is, using GPS and their onboard star-trackers, in order to know which part of the Earth is being measured at any moment.

The third satellite, at 530km up, will initially fly on an orbital plane 0.6Ëš off the lower pair€™s, with the result that its orbit will, over the first three years of the mission, drift to a 90Ëš separation. At that point, Floberghagen explains, when the lower pair are in the Earth€™s shadow the higher one will be in daylight, and vice versa; thus at any given moment the difference between measurements taken by the lower pair and their higher partner should help reveal the Sun€™s influence on the Earth€™s magnetic field.

Over four years, the lower pair of Swarm satellites will see their altitude decay naturally €“ owing to the drag effect of residual atmosphere €“ to just 300km. Therefore, and obviously unusually for spacecraft, they are streamlined to minimise drag and the amount of propellant needed to hold altitude. The front end, with a surface area of just 1m², houses the first 3D ion imagers to go into orbit, to measure ionosphere characteristics.

OUT ON A LIMB

The other unusual design characteristic critical to the mission is that while the total length of each satellite is 9.1m, 4m of that is a trailing boom, on which are mounted the magnetometers and star-tracker. By putting the magnetic field instruments far behind the body of the spacecraft, they will sit in a magnetically clean region, clear of any magnetic disturbance from the spacecraft€™s electrical systems. Once the boom is deployed €“ and it has been designed for extreme stability €“ the spacecraft has no moving parts, whose vibrations would disturb its instruments.

As the name suggests, Swarm relies on multiple spacecraft. Indeed, says Floberghagen, there had at one point been talk of up to seven units, but they were reduced to three to cut costs. The mission design, however, allows other spacecraft to join the constellation, in the probably unlikely event that another space agency were able to launch a companion.

Should one or even two of the spacecraft fail, the mission will still be scientifically useful, he adds. The first backup plan is to operate the lower pair €“ again, to focus on the differences between the measurements taken. If the mission were reduced to just one satellite, it could still measure the circular variation of the Earth€™s magnetic field, hopefully shedding some light on one of its mysteries: the poles wander.

Indeed, magnetic North has moved about 2,000km since it was first measured in 1831, and outright North-for-South field inversions are a regular feature of Earth€™s geological history. Indications are that a field inversion is imminent, an event that would certainly wreak havoc on navigation. So any new insight into the deep workings of the planet that may come from a Swarm of even one spacecraft will be of more than academic interest.

Source: Flight International (UK) and Hispanicbusiness

Survey reveals that 66% of defence and government organisations plan to upgrade their GIS technology by 2016

We’ve just finished the first Defence and Intelligence Survey and thought it would be of interest to you.

This study was conducted in September 2013 with 322 senior-level defence and intelligence professionals from defence and government organisations worldwide. It was designed to help benchmark the current ‘state of the industry’, looking at what their current requirements and concerns are and where they see future trends heading. We hope these results will bring new insight to the industry as to precisely what the key decision makers are focusing on and how they see their budgets shifting.

The survey highlights a challenge faced by virtually all ‘big-data’-driven industries: Where to put data and how to use it. 44% of respondents have said that their main requirement for the next 1-2 years is for data to be available in a timely manner. With 66% of respondents planning to invest in new GIS technology in the next 3 years, could we expect a step-change in the industry?

Download The DGI 2014 Benchmarking Survey Here

Dan Mellins-Cohen.nEditor – DGI 2014