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(SpaceNews by P. de Selding). PARIS — India’s PSLV rocket on Sept. 9 successfully placed Astrium Services’ Spot 6 commercial Earth observation satellite into low Earth orbit in a launch that represented a milestone in the gradual privatization of commercial remote sensing.

Operating from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, the PSLV also carried the 15-kilogram Proiteres amateur radio satellite, built by the Osaka I.

The 712-kilogram Spot 6 will be joined in its 700-kilometer polar low Earth orbit by the identical Spot 7 in 2014. Astrium Services financed the Spot 6 and Spot 7 project without government support, and with no guarantee from French authorities of imagery purchases.

The Spot 6 and Spot 7 investment totals about 300 million euros ($375 million), according to Astrium.

The go-it-alone financing may be unprecedented in the growing, but still highly government-dependent, Earth observation industry, at least in the volume of at-risk capital that Astrium committed.

Commercial Earth observation programs exist in Germany, Britain, the United States and elsewhere, but in these cases governments are investment partners, guaranteed customers or backing the projects in some other way.

Astrium Services would have preferred that this be the case for Spot 6 and Spot 7 as well, but the French government, which invented the commercial Earth observation business in the mid-1980s with the first of the Spot satellite product line, decided that, with 100 million euros or more in annual revenue, the Spot satellite system was ready to leave the government nest.

By not having invested in the program, the French government likely will pay higher per-image prices for Spot imagery.

Spot 6 and Spot 7 are capable of taking black-and-white images with a ground resolution of 1.5 meters. Multispectral imagery in blue, green, red and near-infrared, are captured with 6-meter resolution. Image swath, as it has been for the lower-resolution previous Spot satellites, is 60 square kilometers.

Spot 6 and Spot 7 are designed to operate for 10 years, double the life of Spot 5, which was launched in 2002 on a five-year life but remains healthy in its 820-kilometer orbit. The two-satellite system, using the satellites’ ability to swivel off-nadir, will be able to revisit a given spot on Earth once a day.

Spot 5 weighed about 3,000 kilograms at launch, more than four times the launch weight of Spot 6. Spot 5 takes images with a ground resolution of between 2.5 and 10 meters

While Astrium Services is flying solo for Spot 6 and Spot 7, the company has the exclusive commercial use of the French civil-military Pleiades high-resolution satellites. Pleiades 1A was launched in December. Pleiades 1B is scheduled for launch in 2013.

Pleiades, which like Spot 6 and 7 operates in a 700-kilometer orbit, is capable of detecting images as small as 50 centimeters in diameter in its highest-resolution mode. Swath width is 20 square kilometers.

The two Pleiades and Spot 6 and Spot 7 satellites will be positioned in orbit to maximize revisit time to give Astrium Geo-Information Services a commercial product portfolio designed to capture a piece of the high-resolution end of the market, which is the fastest-growing segment of the business, while not giving up its bread-and-butter medium-resolution customers.

Brand new high-resolution Earth observation satellite
SPOT 6, designed and built by Astrium, has been placed in orbit by an Indian PSLV rocket from the Sriharikota launch base.
SPOT 6 is a high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite. Like its twin SPOT 7, which is slated for launch in 2014, SPOT 6 has a 60-km swath width and produce imagery products with a resolution down to 1.5 metres. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 will ensure service continuity from the SPOT 4 and SPOT 5 satellites, which have been operating since 1998 and 2002 respectively.
SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 will both be operated by Astrium Services.
Astrium

Source SpaceNews

Japan’s Marubeni Aerospace Corp. has been conducting a feasibility study for the Myanmar government this year on the satellite launch, a company official said.

He added that Myanmar’s Minister for Transport Nyan Tun Aung met with a regional representative of Marubeni Corp., the aerospace firm’s parent, on Wednesday as they prepared to hold a workshop on the plan in the second week of October.

“We are in the process of assessing if the launch will be valuable for Myanmar. We have yet to draw up a report,” the official said. “It may take a long time before a decision is made.” He added that the satellite launch was one of a number of possible projects that might be funded through official Japanese loans. If the launch goes ahead, the satellite will be used by the meteorology and hydrology department of Myanmar’s transport ministry, according to the country’s official media.

In April, Japan announced it would forgive about $3.7 billion of Myanmar’s debt and resume suspended aid as Japanese firms continue a push into the country. Myanmar has largely untapped natural resources, including minerals, metals and fossil fuels, and a potentially huge tourism sector, although challenges abound with the rule of law weakly enforced and a major infrastructure deficit.

The junta that ran the country for decades handed power to a quasi-civilian regime—albeit dominated by former soldiers—in a bloodless political transition in March 2011. A series of reforms ensued that have been praised by the opposition and the West, with biting sanctions that had once stymied the country gradually being relaxed. © 2012 AFP

“Read more at”: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-myanmar-mulling-satellite-japan-company.html#jCp

(10 September 2012) GeoEye announced an agreement with Fugro for online imagery dissemination through Fugro World, Fugro’s global portal for delivery of data and solutions.

GeoEye’s EyeQ platform will be integrated with Fugro World to support online access to satellite imagery.

“GeoEye is pleased that Fugro has chosen to add EyeQ services to its range of offerings via the Fugro World global customer portal,” said Paolo Colombi, GeoEye’s vice president for International Sales. “In addition to serving Fugro World’s existing customers, this agreement will also allow GeoEye to welcome new EyeQ and imagery end-users in new markets and regions.”

Fugro is one of the world’s leading service providers for the collection and interpretation of data about the earth’s surface and sub-surface. Through Fugro World, clients are able to seamlessly discover, order and obtain data from multiple sources and suppliers in a single Web site.

“We pride ourselves on offering our global customers access to the satellite imagery they need in order to explore, develop, produce and transport the world’s natural resources,” said Louise Gibbons, manager of Fugro World. “We are pleased to partner with GeoEye and to use EyeQ as part of our suite of online delivery capabilities.”

Fugro chose GeoEye’s EyeQ platform for its ability to provide online access to premium high-resolution satellite imagery content from an extensive global catalogue, as well as new collections using the GeoEye-1/IKONOS constellation. EyeQ offers fully managed service in the cloud, a scalable infrastructure and the availability of open and secure standard Web services.

About GeoEye

GeoEye is a leading source of geospatial information and insight for decision makers and analysts, who need a clear understanding of our changing world to protect lives, manage risk and optimize resources. Each day, organizations in defense and intelligence, public safety, critical infrastructure, energy and online media rely on GeoEye’s imagery, tools and expertise to support important missions around the globe. Widely recognized as a pioneer in high-resolution satellite imagery, GeoEye has evolved into a complete provider of geospatial intelligence solutions. GeoEye’s ability to collect, process and analyze massive amounts of geospatial data allows our customers to quickly see precise changes on the ground and anticipate where events may occur in the future. GeoEye is a public company listed on NASDAQ as GEOY and is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia with more than 740 employees worldwide.

(source: GeoEye)

Call for papers for ISU’S 17th Annual International Symposium, Strasbourg.Tues 5 – Thurs 7 March 2013

During each academic year, the International Space University (ISU) organizes a three-day symposium as an interdisciplinary, international forum to help both the users and the providers of space-related systems to move forward from the discussion of problems to the formulation of innovative solutions. As an independent organization, ISU has developed a winning formula for a “different kind of symposium”:

  • Addressing all aspects of the subject – policy, business, legal, scientific, technical, etc.
  • Creating ample time for discussion
  • Fostering constructive dialogue among different sectors of the space community, or between different communities, that do not often interact in more specialized symposia.

At each of the past several events we have attracted close to 200 participants from agencies, industry and academia in around 30 different countries.
 
ISU’s next annual symposium will address ‘Tele-reach’ where we use this term to refer to technologies and applications which allow remote presence, participation, interaction or control. The emphasis here will be placed on exploring the role that space can play in broadening and sustaining the ‘reach’ of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems to benefit humankind in areas such as education, healthcare and environmental management. Looking beyond the socio-economic benefits here on Earth we will widen the scope to include fields such as tele-presence and tele-operation of remote equipment both on Earth and in space. 

The program will include invited contributions from leading experts in the field plus presentations and posters selected on the basis of abstracts submitted in response to the attached Call for Papers (see www.isunet.edu/symposium by the deadline date of 26th October 2012.
 
More information
CfP-Symposium17.pdf

(July 2012) Satellite measurements show that nitrogen dioxide in the lower atmosphere over parts of Europe and the US has fallen over the past decade. More than 15 years of atmospheric observations have revealed trends in air quality.

Satellite measurements show that nitrogen dioxide in the lower atmosphere over parts of Europe and the US has fallen over the past decade. More than 15 years of atmospheric observations have revealed trends in air quality.

As the world’s population increases, economies in many countries are also growing and populations are concentrating in large cities. With the use of fossil fuels still on the rise, pollution in large cities is also increasing.

Nitrogen dioxide is an important pollutant in the troposphere, the lowest portion of our atmosphere.

Satellite observations of it began with the launch of the ERS-2 satellite in 1995 and its GOME instrument, originally designed for monitoring atmospheric ozone.

Monitoring continued with the Sciamachy sensor on Envisat, OMI on NASA’s Aura and GOME-2 on Eumetsat’s MetOp.

This set of instruments shows, that over the years, nitrogen dioxide levels have decreased in the US and Europe, but increased in the Middle East and parts of Asia.

“The changes observed from space can be explained by two effects: increased use of fossil fuels in evolving economies, leading to increased pollution and improvements in technology – like cleaner cars – leading to reduced pollution,” explained Andreas Richter, a scientist with the Institute of Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen in Germany.

“These changes in pollution levels are surprisingly rapid, and satellites are the only way to monitor them globally.

“For this, the long-term availability of satellite instruments that can monitor pollution is of key importance.”

In the US, urban areas in the state of California showed a consistent drop in nitrogen dioxide.

“Airborne and ground-based measurements supported the findings from the satellite data,” said Si-Wan Kim from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The satellite measurements are now being used to improve the emission inventory in California.”

These results were recently presented at the ‘Advances in Atmospheric Science and Applications’ conference in Bruges, Belgium.

Organised by ESA, the conference looked at the remote sensing of trace gases in the atmosphere, clouds and aerosols, greenhouse gases and air quality monitoring.

Beside the scientific exploitation of satellite data, the conference also focused on how information from past Earth observation missions can complement current data for climate monitoring.

The use of current mission data for defining future missions and exploitation programmes is also important.

The Sentinel-4 and -5 missions being developed under Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme will continue to provide measurements of atmospheric chemistry, enabling the development of services especially for monitoring air quality over Europe.

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Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) is announcing the planned launch of exactView-1, the highest detection performance Automatic Identification System (AIS) satellite ever built, on 22nd July by a Soyuz launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

exactView-1 (previously known as ADS-1b) was built under contract for exactEarth and will become the fifth deployed satellite in exactEarth’s advanced vessel monitoring satellite constellation. COM DEV Canada acted as prime contractor and COM DEV Europe(UK) supplied the advanced AIS transceiver payload system for this mission. The satellite is based on SSTL’s off-the-shelf SSTL-100 platform, adapted for the mission with an additional deployable solar panel providing extra power for the COM DEV designed AIS receiver payload.

AIS is currently deployed on more than 80,000 vessels globally, however AIS base station receivers are mostly based on land and can only track ships moving up to 50 nautical miles off the coast. exactEarth is pioneering space-based AIS services that increases the range, enabling the monitoring of vessels throughout the World’s oceans. Operating from a polar orbit, exactView-1 will utilise high-speed S-band and C-band communications to frequently downlink information to ground stations in Svalbard, Norway, Guildford, UK and several other locations around the world. exactEarth will use a constellation of AIS satellites to provide near real time information about vessel locations, routes and traffic for commercial and governmental customers.

Internet: www.sstl.co.uk/launches/exactView-1

A MapAction team is responding to widespread and repeated flooding in western Paraguay attached to a United Nations’ assistance group. The worst floods for more than a decade began in April.

They have left thousands of families in scattered rural communities in urgent need of emergency food and other help after the floods devastated crops and livestock. A complication of the emergency is that the affected communities are spread across two rural departments with a combined area somewhat larger than England and Wales. Many villages have remained cut off by road for weeks, requiring aid to be flown in by helicopter. On 29 June MapAction received a request from the UN to support a group travelling to Paraguay to assist the government and international agencies in coordinating assistance.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) MapAction is a volunteer group of geographical information systems (GIS) professionals. It has the capacity to deploy its humanitarian mapping and information management team anywhere in the world, often within a few hours of an alert. MapAction delivers information in mapped form, from information gathered at the disaster scene. Paper maps, updated daily, are issued to aid agencies at the scene. The information is also distributed electronically, for upload to websites and as data feeds for other GIS users.

Read more: MapAction

Over a dozen radio signals that have hindered data collection on ESA’s SMOS water mission have been switched off. ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was launched in 2009 to improve our understanding of our planet’s water cycle. In order to do this, it measures the microwaves emitted by Earth in the 1400–1427 MHz range.

Radio signals in this frequency range render some of its measurements unusable for scientific purposes. With the support of national authorities, ESA was able to pinpoint the origin of these unlawful emissions.

At least 13 sources of interference have now been switched off. This has significantly improved SMOS observations at high latitudes, which were previously so contaminated that accurate salinity measurements were not possible above 45 degrees latitude as the satellite headed north. One of the largest areas of contamination in the northern hemisphere is over the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans, primarily from military radars. The efforts to reduce interference will benefit other missions carrying similar detectors, such as NASA’s Aquarius satellite, which was launched last year and which measures ocean salinity at the same frequency.

Read more: ESA

Millions of people from the world’s most vulnerable and poorest communities will benefit from new disaster preparedness programmes funded from the European Commission’s Disaster Preparedness Programme (DIPECHO).

This year € 35 million has been allocated to improve the capacities of the communities at risk from natural disasters. The funds will go to the following regions particularly vulnerable to natural disasters: € 10 million to Central America, €11 million to South East Asia, €8 million to Central Asia and the Caucasus region and € 6 million in Southern Africa.

The DIPECHO programme seeks to limit the negative impact of natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, droughts, landslides, earthquakes and cyclones, tidal waves/tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, flash floods, forest fires, cold waves and storms by strengthening the response capacity of local communities and national authorities. The projects can include reinforcing infrastructure, training, awareness-raising, establishing or improving local early-warning systems and contingency-planning.

Read more: European Commission

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At the 47th Annual General Meeting of the Institution of Surveyors in Ilorin, Nigeria, Nigeria’s Vice President, Muhammad Namadi Sambo said the Nigerian federal government would do everything possible to map its geographical landscape to address disaster management in the country.

For this purpose, the vice president said, the office of the Surveyor-General of the Federation has been positioned for the task. Sambo called on state governments to also take up the challenge. “This essentially is what maps and its attribute products enable us to do.
The government of Nigeria will do everything possible to ensure that our geographical space is properly and comprehensively mapped”.

Read more: AllAfrica.com

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