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The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring service has been fully operational since May 2015, following the signature of the Delegation Agreement between the European Commission and Mercator Océan in November 2014. Entrusted by this agreement with the responsibility for the operation of the service, Mercator Océan has coordinated the transition of the service from a pilot phase to an operational one.

On November 11th 2014, Mercator Océan, the French centre for analysis and forecasting of the oceans, was entrusted by the European Commission to manage and implement the marine component of the European Union’s Copernicus programme: the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). With a budget of up to €144 million, Mercator Océan is committed to operating the service on behalf of the European Commission for the next six years, up until 2021.

Evolution of the service

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) provides full, free and open access to regular and systematic reference information on the physical state and marine ecosystems of the oceans and European regional seas (including, for example, temperature, currents, salinity, sea surface height, sea ice, marine optics, nutrients, etc.). The service is enabled by satellite and in situ observation-based data, and can provide a description of the current situation (analysis), a prediction of the situation a few days ahead (forecast) and the provision of consistent retrospective data records for recent years (re-analysis).

The service, which has been fully operational since May 2015, will also contribute to the monitoring of compliance with major EU policies, such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The service provides information applicable to a diverse range of fields including the protection of marine species, maritime safety and vessel routing, the sustainable exploitation of ocean resources, marine energy resources, climate monitoring and weather forecasting.

CMEMS has been built up through a series of three EU-funded research and development projects (MyOcean, MyOcean2 and MyOcean Follow-On), coordinated by Mercator Océan with the participation of 60 other partners. During the course of these projects, starting from March 2009, the service was available on a pre-operational, pilot basis.

The products delivered by the service are provided free of charge to registered users through an interactive catalogue available on the ‘marine.copernicus.eu’ website. CMEMS began operations with over 5 000 subscribers, who had already registered during its pre-operational phase.

Engaging users and raise awareness

Mercator Océan has been involved in continuous efforts to engage with and raise awareness amongst new and existing users during the development of the service, and these activities will continue in the operational phase, during which several annual regional and training workshops will be organised. A workshop focusing on two major oceanic regions, the Mediterranean Sea and the IBI Region (Atlantic-European South West Shelf-Ocean), will be held in the winter of 2015.

Two major streams of activity are underway which will further foster the evolution of the service: one focusing on the scientific and technological progress of the service (Service Evolution programme), and another dedicated to increasing the uptake of services amongst users, especially in relation to new value-added (“downstream”) services (User Uptake programme)

Both activities are designed to stimulate dynamic interactions between the marine research and user communities and their stakeholders. In particular the User Uptake activity will be crucial to link the CMEMS with private companies; it will enable and promote the development of downstream applications or of technical demonstrators in Maritime safety, Marine resources and Coastal environment.

A major workshop was organised in Brussels in September to present CMEMS service evolution and user uptake strategies and to gather feedback from the main CMEMS stakeholders and the wider marine research and user communities.

Interoperability

There is a clear complementarity between the different Copernicus services. In particular, there is an inherent link between the Marine, the Atmosphere and the Climate Change services, the latter two being operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). For this reason, ECMWF and Mercator Océan are conducting an open dialogue in order to examine interoperability between the services to avoid duplication of efforts.

Mercator Océan will also collaborate with the European Environment Agency (EEA), coordinator of the in situ component of Copernicus, for the acquisition of observations at sea. Similar collaboration will be carried out with the European Space Agency for the acquisition of satellite data.

Mercator Océan is successfully implementing, on behalf of the European Commission, a user-driven Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, which is expected to contribute to the Blue Economy and to European innovation and competitiveness. So far, the private sector represents about 20% of CMEMS users and improving this proportion is a challenge and a strategic element of the EC’s Space policies.

Copernicus Manrine Environment Monitorin service website

CMEMS – Your open Ocean Forum

NASA and ISRO joining hands to build an earth observation satellite called NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Mission).

The satellite will be in charge of measuring changes in the Earth’s surface related to motions of the crust and ice surface, and its launch is scheduled for 2021. Its mission will comprise snow and glacier studies in the Himalayas, monitoring of agricultural biomass over India, Indian coastal and near-shore ocean studies, and disaster monitoring and management. “One of the GSLV Mark II (launcher) will carry NASA’s satellite NISAR in 2021. There is a very good chance of commercial requirement. Currently we are working on it,” stated Kiran Kumar, Chairman, ISRO.

by Peter B. de Selding — September 25, 2015. PARIS — A European Earth observation advisory committee has selected a mission to map global vegetation fluorescence to measure plant-stored carbon ahead of a carbon- and methane-monitoring satellite as Europe’s next Earth Explorer mission.

Meeting in Krakow, Poland, after two days of debate between the two missions’ backers, the Earth Science Advisory Committee concluded that the Fluorescence Explorer (Flex) mission should move toward full funding, with a planned launch in 2021 or 2022.

The committee’s recommendation is all but certain to be adopted by the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Program Board when it convenes in mid-November.

The decision means that the CarbonSat mission, which like Flex was designed to examine the carbon cycle and has been vying for ESA backing for years, will have to await the next round of mission competitions in a couple of years or seek backing outside the usual ESA context.

The committee’s endorsement of Flex came with a request that ESA not abandon CarbonSat, whose precision measurements were viewed as offering an unparalleled assessment of atmospheric carbon and methane.

Both proposals have a long history of seeking funding that has been delayed in part for technical-readiness reasons. The precision of the proposed CarbonSat instrument is still viewed as challenging and may yet win backing as a technology development on its own, even before the full mission is approved.

The Flex mission had been set aside following a previous ESA Earth observation competition, in part because of the complexity of its own instruments. That complexity has been reduced by the arrival of Europe’s Sentinel 3 Earth observation satellite, whose multispectral imagery will do some of the work of Flex.

The two satellites will now fly in tandem in polar low Earth orbit. Sentinel 3 is one of a fleet of environment-monitoring satellites financed by the European Commission as part of a long-term program called Copernicus.

To reduce the risk of budget growth or schedule slips, ESA financed two industrial consortia to work on each of the two proposed missions and to continue the work until what is called Phase B1.

This means spending more money before the winner is selected, but it eliminates sufficient technical and financial risk to be worthwhile, ESA Earth Observation Director Volker Liebig said. It is a procedure ESA adopted after previous Earth observation missions faced technical hurdles that were not foreseen when the contracts were signed.

To further reduce the likelihood of future bad surprises, ESA is almost certain to order the Flex instrument package by mid-2016 but to hold off on signing a full mission contract, including the satellite platform, until a year later. It is in the development and production of the sensors that most cost overruns and schedule delays have occurred.

Jose Moreno, an Earth physics professor at the University of Valencia, Spain, and chairman of the Flex Mission Advisory Committee, said Sept. 24 that starting instrument development in 2016 and platform construction in 2017 could advance the mission’s launch date by one year, to 2021. He said the Flex idea has been looking for ESA support since 1998.

In a Sept. 25 interview, Liebig said his division has more than half of the total financing needed for the Flex payload — enough to begin development early in 2016.

The remainder, including funds required for manufacturing the platform, assembly and testing of the full unit, launch and operations, will await a late-2016 meeting of ESA government ministers to decide a multiyear financial commitment.

Current estimates are that Flex’s industrial development will cost around 150 million euros ($165 million). When the launch — aboard a European Vega small-satellite vehicle — the ground infrastructure and operations are added in, total Flex mission costs are likely to come in just under 300 million euros.

Teddington, UK — The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has published an extensive report ‘Metrology for Climate – Metrology priorities for the earth observation and climate community‘ containing the recommendations from international research organisations on the role of metrology in supporting climate research.

The report follows a two-day event hosted by NPL in May 2015, which provided structured workshop sessions to investigate and prioritise the role that metrology should play in supporting the robust measurement of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs).

There are 50 ECVs associated with the three Atmospheric, Oceanic and Terrestrial domains, and the concept provides a crucial systematic and internationally consistent framework of variables to facilitate the monitoring and understanding of climate change and forecast models.

During the event, three sessions were run in parallel to focus on the three domains. Each session addressed the current adherence of satellite products to climate monitoring principles as stated by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and the adequacy of specific requirements for the ECVs.

They reviewed existing ECV datasets and developed recommendations on how metrological techniques are and can be applied to the generation of improved ECVs to support the long-term generation of quality and consistent climate data records (CDR).
The key objectives of the workshop were to address the following questions:

  • Can GCOS requirements be met and how can metrology help the earth observation and CDR community?
  • What can the earth observation and CDR community do to ensure successful integration of metrological principles into the monitoring of ECVs and the formation of CDRs?

Download a copy of the report here (http://www.npl.co.uk/content/ConPublication/6728).

by Peter B. de Selding — October 6, 2015. PARIS — Europe’s meteorological satellite organization, Eumetsat, on Oct. 5 contracted with the European Space Agency to build Europe’s next-generation polar-orbiting weather satellites intended to operate between 2021 and around 2042.

The contract for the six-satellite Metop Second Generation system — three with a payload for atmospheric sounding and optical imaging, and three with microwave-imaging sensors — was approved by Eumetsat’s member states in June.

The entire program — the satellites, six launches, ground infrastructure and at least 21 years of operations — is budgeted at about 4.1 billion euros ($4.7 billion at current exchange rates). Darmstadt, Germany-based Eumetsat is responsible for about 80 percent of the budget, with ESA furnishing the rest.

The relationship between the two agencies for what is also known as the European Polar System Second Generation follows a pattern developed long ago. ESA and Eumetsat jointly finance development of the initial satellite models, and then ESA goes under contract to Eumetsat for provision of the remaining copies.

Eumetsat handles the selection of launchers, development of the ground infrastructure and all operations.

The six satellites will be manufactured by Airbus Defence and Space under a 1.3 billion-euro contract signed in October. Development of some of the payload instruments was allowed to begin pending the Eumetsat funding decision to preserve the program’s schedule margin.

“We have found that when there is a schedule issue it is usually because of something with the payload, not with the platform,” ESA Earth Observation Director Volker Liebig said during the contract signing ceremony at ESA headquarters here.

Liebig said the critical design review for the Airbus-built satellite platforms is expected to start by the end of the year. “The program is in good shape in terms of schedule,” he said.

Alain Ratier, director-general of Eumetsat, said the agency will decide in 2019 on a launcher for the six satellites. Each Metop Second Generation satellite is expected to weigh about 4,400 kilograms, including an extra fuel load to provide for a powered atmospheric re-entry into the South Pacific Ocean at the end of its seven-year life.

Given their size, the satellites might survive atmospheric re-entry and then pose a safety risk if Eumetsat simply moved them into lower orbit at the end of their service life and then allowed natural forces to pull them into the atmosphere.

Their orbit and size make them too large for Europe’s Vega small-satellite launcher and a poor fit for the Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket without a companion payload sharing the cost.

That being the case, Ratier said the launcher choice likely will be between the Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket, which Eumetsat has used before, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle.

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket, whose lighter variant is designed for missions like Eumetsat’s, is unlikely to have flown by the 2019 contract date sought by Eumetsat.

“We make our selections based on reliability and price,” Ratier said.
Eumetsat has refused to commit to buying European launch services, but nonetheless in recent years has never launched outside Europe except when using a Euro-Russian joint venture to secure a Soyuz launch from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Ratier agreed that once the third and last of the first-generation Metop satellites, Metop-C, is launched in 2017 and declared operational, Eumetsat will be under little pressure to launch in 2021.

What Eumetsat member governments want above all is to assure Metop service continuity. Metop-A was launched in 2006 and is still operational; Metop-B was launched in 2012. Metop-C is likely to remain operational well beyond 2021.

In addition to continuing Eumetsat’s core mission, the Metop Second Generation program will further develop the U.S.-European meteorological partnership in what is called the Joint Polar System. An initial joint system, featuring U.S. and European satellites, is already in operation.

Ratier said that despite the annual struggle in the United States to secure a firm government budget, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Eumetsat’s U.S. counterpart — is expected to conclude an agreement on the joint system in time for a signature in December.

Further buttressing the global supply of polar-orbiting meteorological satellite data is the decision by the Chinese government to furnish China’s FY-3 spacecraft to add a third orbit to the U.S. and European spacecraft.

The Chinese have accepted a request from the World Meteorological Organization to enter the polar-orbit service provision alongside the United States and Europe, a development Ratier said will materially improve global numerical weather prediction.

See more at

by Peter B. de Selding — October 7, 2015.

PARIS — China’s first domestically built commercial high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite was launched Oct. 7 in the latest example of China’s lightning-fast transformation from satellite imagery importer to producer.

Operating from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northern China’s Gansu Province, a Chinese Long March 2D rocket placed the four-satellite Jilin-1 payload into a 655-kilometer polar low Earth orbit, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.

Two of the satellites are designed to provide ultra-high-definition video imagery. A third is a technology demonstrator. The fourth, designed for commercial use, carries a camera capable of producing images with a 72-centimeter ground resolution when looking straight down.

The satellite was built by Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., which is located in Jilin Province and is a commercial spinoff of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics.

How much commercial business can be generated from the satellite on its own is unclear. But Chang Guang does not lack for ambition. It plans to have 16 satellites in orbit by the end of 2016 in what it calls the second stage of its program, with 60 satellites operational by 2020 — enough to offer a 30-minute revisit capability anywhere in the world.

The company has said it wants 138 satellites in service by 2030, providing 10-minute revisits, in the program’s fourth and final stage.

The launch was the 10th of China’s Long March rocket family in 2015 and the sixth since Sept. 12. China Great Wall Industry Corp. (CGWIC) of Beijing, which markets the rocket overseas, said it expects to maintain a launch rhythm of 15-20 Long March campaigns per year in the coming years regardless of whether the U.S. government lifts its ban on the export of U.S. satellite parts to China.

CGWIC Vice President and General Manager Zhiheng Fu said the forecast Chinese government demand will account for nearly all of the near-term launches, many of them scheduled to place China’s Beidou satellite positioning, navigation and timing constellation into medium Earth orbit.

China has been a large market for satellite Earth observation, mainly from U.S. and European vendors, for more than 20 years. But since 2009 China has rapidly been replacing imports with imagery from its own satellites — first in low and medium resolution for wide-scale mapping, and more recently for sharper-resolution imagery as well.

The China Center for Resources Satellite Data and Application (CRESDA), in a Sept. 17 presentation to the World Satellite Business Week conference here, said Chinese demand for non-Chinese satellite imagery at resolutions of 2.5 meters or less has fallen from more than 8 million square kilometers in 2009 to near zero in 2013.

During that period, Chinese domestic satellites’ share of the medium-resolution market went from 5 percent to 100 percent.

What was true in medium resolution is now happening in high resolution.

Zikuan Zhou, CRESDA’s director of international business development, said the cost of imagery with 1-meter resolution or sharper, much of it still provided by non-Chinese sources, has dropped sharply — from 40 Chinese yuan ($6.40) per square kilometer in 2009 to 16 yuan now.

Image processing fees have followed suit, dropping by about 30 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to CRESDA. Zhou said the sharpest-resolution satellite in China’s domestic fleet — before Jilin-1 — was the 80-centimeter-resolution GF-2, launched in 2014.

These trends have occurred at a time when the overall market for Earth observation imagery in China has continued to expand quickly.

The Jilin-1 launch, if followed by a constellation next year, will present a competitive challenge to Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd. (21AT) of Beijing, whose three-satellite Beijing-2 constellation was launched in July and is scheduled to begin service by the end of October.

The Beijing-2 satellites, with a 1-meter ground resolution, were built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) of Britain, and remain SSTL property. But 21AT has purchased the full capacity of all three satellites.

Officials from 21AT have said that despite the fact that their satellites were built outside China, Chinese government authorities have indicated that 21AT’s imagery products will have the same access to the Chinese government market as Chinese-built systems.

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The European Commission will invest almost €16 billion in research and innovation in the next two years under Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation funding scheme, following a new work programme for 2016-17 adopted on 13 October. The work programme is now available on the participant portal.

The new funding opportunities offered by the Work Programme are directly aligned with the policy priorities of the Commission of President Jean-Claude Juncker and will substantially contribute to the Jobs, Growth and Investment Package, the Digital Single Market, Energy Union and Climate change policy, Internal Market with stronger industry and making Europe a stronger global actor.

In line with Commissioner Moedas’ strategic priorities, Horizon 2020 will be open to innovation, open to science, and open to the world. The new Work Programme 2016-17 offers funding opportunities through a range of calls for proposals, public procurements and other actions like the Horizon Prizes, together covering nearly 600 topics. The programme’s structure is a reflection of the overall flexibility of Horizon 2020 which focuses on the EU’s long-term priorities and the most pressing societal challenges while allowing it to swiftly address emerging problems such as outbreaks of diseases.

The programme will support a range of cross-cutting initiatives: the modernisation of Europe’s manufacturing industry (€1 billion); technologies and standards for automatic driving (over €100 million); the Internet of Things (€139 million) to address digitalisation of EU industries; Industry 2020 in the Circular Economy (€670 million) to develop strong and sustainable economies; and Smart and Sustainable Cities (€232 million) to better integrate environmental, transport, energy and digital networks in EU’s urban environments.

(More information in the full press release and associated fact sheet)
Source

Research and innovation are the engines of Europe’s progress and vital to addressing today’s new pressing challenges like immigration, climate change, clean energy and healthy societies.
Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation

Japan International Cooperation Agency (J ICA) will provide $3 million to realize a pilot project as part of the creation of the national infrastructure for geospatial data in Ukraine, Deputy Head of Diplomatic Mission and Advisor to Embassy of Japan to Ukraine Hiromi Nakano has said.

“This is a grant, we do not demand the return of it,” she said at the joint seminar of JICA and the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre in Kyiv on Friday.

Nakano said that the pilot project which was launched by JICA in September 2015 will be finished in August 2017.

Head of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Maksym Martyniuk said that the pilot project today is considered as a preparatory stage to create the database for processing geospatial information in Ukraine.

The project will cover geospatial data of territories of around 900 square meters.

Source

Japan International Cooperation Agency is giving $3 million to help Ukraine create a national infrastructure for geospatial data. The agency and the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre held a joint seminar last week to make this announcement. The project, which was launched in September 2015 is scheduled to be finished in August 2017. It will cover geospatial data of territories of around 900 square meters. ©Source

China launched four satellites to provide photographs to commercial clients while helping with harvest assessment, geological disaster prevention and resource surveys. The launch of the Jilin-1 mission took place at 04:13 UTC on Wednesday, using a Long March-2D launch vehicle from the 603 Launch Pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s LC43.

Chinese Launch

The Jilin-1 mission was developed on the China’s Jilin Province and is the country’s first self-developed remote sensing satellite for commercial use.

Jilin-1 consists of four satellites, one for high-definition images, one for testing new space technology and another two for video.

Data will be provided to commercial clients to help them forecast and mitigate geological disasters, as well as shorten the time scale for the exploration of natural resources.

2015-10-06-235504The satellites were developed by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd under the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Jilin, one of the country’s oldest industrial bases, is developing its satellite industry as a new economic drive. The province plans to launch 60 satellites by 2020 and 138 by 2030.

The first phase will see the launch of the first four Jilin-1 satellites. Between 2016 and 2019 there are plans to have 16 satellites in orbit, completing a remote sensing network that will cover the entire globe and will be capable of a three to four hours update in the data provided.

From 2020, the plans point to a 60 satellite orbital constellation capable of a 30 minutes update in the data provided.
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From 2030 the Jilin constellation will have 138 satellites in orbit, forming a all-day, all-weather, full spectrum acquisition segment data and a capability of observing any global arbitrary point with a 10 minutes revisit capability, providing the world’s highest spatial resolution and time resolution space information products.

The four satellites are Jilin-1, Lingqiao-A, Lingqiao-B and LQSat.

Jilin 1 is a 420 kg high-definition optical satellite with a 0.72 m resolution pan-chromatic camera and 4 m resolution multi-spectral camera.

It is equipped with three deployable solar panels for power generation that will be stored in internal batteries. The satellite will operate on a 656 km sun synchronous orbit.

2015-10-07-054204The Lingqiao-A and Lingqiao-B satellites are designed to capture videos with a 4K ultra-clear video resolution of 1.13 meters m on 4.3 × 2.4 km swaths. Weighing 95 kg each, its dimensions are 1.1 meter diameter and 1.2 length.

The satellites are equipped with body mounted solar panels. The satellites will operate on a 656 km sun synchronous orbit.

LQSat is a micro-satellite for technology demonstration designed by CIOMP. Its main payload is a camera with 2 m resolution.

LQSat is equipped with a fixed solar array for power generation. Satellite dimensions are 0.40 × 0.40 × 0.60 m and a mass of about 54 kg. The lifetime of LQSat is about 1 year. UHF downlink with 25 wpm CW and 4k8 CSP packet data using MSK at 27dBm, and also a 2.4GHz downlink at 30dBm using 1Mbps QPSK.

“More info“http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/10/china-launches-jilin-1-mission-long-march-2d/