Airborne Sensor Helps Firefighters Battle Flames

by Staff WritersMoffett Field, CA (SPX) Aug 19, 2011

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As the summer blazes on, NASA-developed infrared imaging technology will once again be used to support wildfire incident commanders in California.

Beginning in September and continuing through the end of October, a NASA thermal-infrared scanning instrument, mounted in a NASA Beechcraft B200 King Air, will stand ready to support the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) with real-time imagery of fire characteristics.

NASA has a history of assisting with imaging wildfires and this summer will be no different. NASA has developed a thermal-infrared wildfire scanner that detects hot spots and various elements of the fire and burn characteristics, including post-fire burn severity.

The use of the Autonomous Modular Sensor (AMS) sensor to support wildfire incident management personnel, will provide benefits to the people of California by enabling CAL FIRE to derive near-real-time information on major wildfire events, helping to save time, resources, property and potentially lives," said Vince Ambrosia of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., the projects principal Investigator.

"The second benefit is in the long-term partnership between the entities, which allows some of these NASA-derived technologies to be matured to operational utility and adopted for use by the disaster support agencies in the state a win-win for the residents and tax payers of California," he added.

While in the air, the scanner collects imagery for real-time, on-board, autonomous analysis and creation of fire products for delivery through a satellite communications system to servers at NASA Ames. From there, the data is made available in many web service formats, including formats viewable within the Google Earth visualization tool.

Space Storm Tracked from Sun to Earth

by Dr. Tony Phillips for NASA Science NewsHuntsville AL (SPX) Aug 19, 2011

Still from video of the orbital positions and fields of view of the STEREO spacecraft during the December 2008 CME. The orange area represents the CME. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio.

For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.

"The movie sent chills down my spine," says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Researcher Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small."

CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages. Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting.

"We have seen CMEs before, but never quite like this," says Lika Guhathakurta, program scientist for the STEREO mission at NASA headquarters. "STEREO-A has given us a new view of solar storms."

STEREO-A is one of two spacecraft launched in 2006 to observe solar activity from widely-spaced locations. At the time of the storm, STEREO-A was more than 65 million miles from Earth, giving it the "big picture" view other spacecraft in Earth orbit lack.

NASA Research Confirms it's a Small World, After All

by Staff WritersPasadena CA (JPL) Aug 18, 2011

File image.

A NASA-led research team has confirmed what Walt Disney told us all along: Earth really is a small world, after all. Since Charles Darwin's time, scientists have speculated that the solid Earth might be expanding or contracting. That was the prevailing belief, until scientists developed the theory of plate tectonics, which explained the large-scale motions of Earth's lithosphere, or outermost shell.

Even with the acceptance of plate tectonics half a century ago, some Earth and space scientists have continued to speculate on Earth's possible expansion or contraction on various scientific grounds.

Now a new NASA study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, has essentially laid those speculations to rest. Using a cadre of space measurement tools and a new data calculation technique, the team detected no statistically significant expansion of the solid Earth.

The results of the public consultations on the European Space Policy

by Hubert BartkowiakBrussels, Belgium (SPX) Aug 17, 2011

When asked, whether the EU should engage itself an activities related to the space exploration, which currently is lead by ESA and its member states, the vast majority of respondents answered affirmatively, pointing out various reasons for such a decision. Most (69%; multiple answers could be chosen) responded that this will contribute to the scientific and technological development of the EU.

The European Commission released figures on the public consultations on the European Space Policy, which were finished on March 15th. 608 entities answered the questions from the Commission.

The Commission has collected 608 opinions from the public consultations on the European Space Policy, which began at the turn of 2010/2011. Following is a brief elaboration of the results published by the European Commission.

The characterization of respondentsFirst of all individuals (39%) and academic institutions (29%) answered the calling. The next largest groups were micro and small enterprises (7%) and government entities (7%). Also 15 NGOs answered the questions (2.5% of respondents). The national share coincides with the degree of development of space technologies in various countries.

Most participants (more than 100) came from Germany and France. They are followed by Belgium (86), Italy (62), Austria (33), Spain (36), United Kingdom (26), the Netherlands and Sweden (both 24).

Poland sent four answers. From two countries, Estonia and Finland, no response was received. The activities of the respondents, which took part in the consultation, were in almost 70% somehow related to the space sector. About 12%, were engaged in the manufacture of spacecraft and technologies directly associated with spaceflight or were users of space technology. The next largest group (5%) were those involved in space policy.

ESA protests EC’s stand on GMES

Publish Date: 09 August 2011 Paris, France: Recently, the European Commission (EC) proposed removal of Europe’s flagship environmental programme, Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), from the commission’s multiyear financial budget. Hence, the European Space Agency (ESA) sent letters to its member countries asking them to protest this decision of the EC, ESA’s Director of Earth observation, Volker Liebig, said. There are 19 member countries of the ESA. ESA also will take its case to the European Parliament in an effort to find a place in the commission’s seven-year budget for the multibillion-dollar Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, he added. Volker Liebig, whose directorate has already spent more than approximately USD 2.2 billion preparing GMES and its fleet of Sentinel satellites, specifically denied a commission allegation that GMES is, or threatens soon to be, over budget. In its proposed seven-year budget, the commission — which is the executive arm of the 27-nation European Union — lumps GMES together with the European-led ITER next-generation nuclear reactor, which has suffered multiple cost overruns and is still years away from being fully operational. Programs like these, the commission says in its budget proposal, should not be included in the fixed multiyear budget, which covers the period from 2014 to 2020. “This is just not true,” Liebig said of the commission’s assumption about GMES’s likely cost at completion. Liebig said he was particularly surprised that the commission elected to include the Galileo satellite navigation constellation in its seven-year budget proposal despite the fact that the 30-satellite Galileo constellation is years behind schedule and, even after a recent effort to rein in costs, still expected to cost 40 percent more than its 3.4-billion-euro budget. Liebig informed that GMES development is on schedule and within its budget, with the first of the Sentinel satellites to be launched in 2013. ESA and the commission have agreed to order identical copies of the first three Sentinel satellites to take advantage of scale economies offered by their contractors. Source: Space News via

http://www.geospatialworld.net

Iran to send new satellite into space

Tehran (XNA) Aug 10, 2011

Rassad-1 (Observation-1) could revolve 15 times around the Earth every 24 hours with a two-month life cycle.

Chancellor of Iran's Sharif University Reza Roustazad said Monday that Iran plans to launch a new domestically-manufactured satellite dubbed Sharif in the near future, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

"Industrial Sharif University's satellite will be the last satellite designed by university students, which will be launched into space," Roustazad was quoted as saying.

The Sharif satellite, described by officials as the country's best, will be sent into space when it is capable of orbiting 36, 000 kilometers above the Earth's surface, he said.

The reason why Iran's satellites cannot stay in space for a long time is that they cannot orbit the Earth in an altitude upper than 36,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface, he said according to the report.

Using Satellites for Human and Environmental Security Needs

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 27, 2011

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Can satellites attuned to curbing human rights violations become an instrument for stopping genocide here on Earth?

An opinion editorial asks this question and more in the Summer 2011 issue of Imaging Notes - a distinctive publication that is partnered with Secure World Foundation and focuses on Earth remote sensing for security, energy and the environment.

"To what extent are projects like the private-sector Satellite Sentinel Project effective? They are using imagery to put pressure on governments to intervene, but to what impact? This dialog is an important one," said Myrna James Yoo, publisher of Imaging Notes.

This issue is detailed - along with other satellite remote sensing applications in the just-issued Summer 2011 Imaging Notes magazine - with an online version available here: http://www.imagingnotes.com/

Critical Milestone Reached for 2012 Landsat Mission

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 10, 2011

The Operational Land Imager (OLI), built by the Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation, will fly on the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). OLI will measure in the visible, near infrared, and short wave infrared portions of the spectrum, with an improved signal-to-noise ratio compared to past Landsat instruments. The opening facing the left of the photo will point at the Earth, and the opening on the right is for pointing towards the sun, to calibrate the instrument. Credit: Ball Aerospace

The Operational Land Imager (OLI), built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo., has been approved by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for shipment to Orbital Sciences Corporation, Gilbert, Ariz. for integration onto the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft.

"OLI will be more sensitive to land cover changes and characteristics across the landscape and over time than previous Landsat instruments," said James Irons, LDCM Project Scientist at NASA Goddard. "Analysts will be better able to identify and characterize land cover while also being better able to detect and monitor change."

A multitude of scientific, commercial and governmental users rely on Landsat as their primary source of moderate-resolution, multispectral, image data. OLI will measure Earth's reflectance in nine portions of the spectrum, including visible light, near infrared, and shortwave infrared, providing data that scientists and others use to quantify changes in Earth's landscapes.

OLI images will cover wide areas of the Earth's landscape while providing sufficient resolution to distinguish features like urban centers, farms, forests and other land uses.

Schriever NOPS ranks as AFSPC best space ops squadron

by Scott Prater for Schriever Sentinel Schriever AFB CO (SPX) Aug 01, 2011

The right stuff.

People familiar with Schriever Air Force Base have grown accustomed to hearing the "SOPS" acronym. The 50th Space Wing has plenty of them: one through four, 21, 22 and 23 SOPS. They're all space operations squadrons under the umbrella of the 50th Space Wing. But, Schriever is also home to a space operations squadron that goes largely unnoticed. And that's the way leaders like it.
The National Reconnaissance Office Operations Squadron, operates U.S. reconnaissance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, an organization which has been shrouded in mystery since its inception in 1961.
The launch and orbit of the Soviet Union's Sputnik-1 satellite prompted U.S. intelligence leaders to create the organization. Its mere existence was classified for nearly 30 years, but following the collapse of the former military and technological superpower, the NRO's existence was declassified in 1992. Soon after, the American public and the world began to learn about how important the NRO had become.