Arianespace to launch DZZ-HR high-resolution observation satellite

Toulouse, France (SPX) Jun 27, 2012

Jean-Yves Le Gall.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace, and Jean Dauphin, Director Earth Observation Navigation and Science - Astrium France, announced that they have signed the launch service and solutions contract for the DZZ-HR satellite.
The DZZ-HR high-resolution observation satellite is being built by Astrium for the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Weighing 900 kg at launch, the DZZ-HR satellite will be launched by Arianespace's Vega light launcher into a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 750 km. It will be launched from the Guiana Space Center, French Guiana, in the second quarter of 2014.
The DZZ-HR system will be independently controlled by Kazakh operators who have been trained by Astrium. Using images acquired by the DZZ-HR satellite from the entire planet, the system will provide very-high-quality panchromatic and multispectral products for a wide range of applications, including cadastral surveys, management of natural resources, environmental monitoring and homeland surveillance.
Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said: "Today, with the European launcher Vega, we can offer all customers new launch services for this type of mission.
This is the third contract for Vega, after Sentinel 2 and 3, and this time we are serving an end-customer outside of Europe. We are also delighted to be working once again with Astrium Satellites, with whom we have a long-standing relationship of mutual trust."
source:  http://www.spacedaily.com

China to invest in Earth monitoring system

Beijing (UPI) Jun 27, 2012

China says it will invest $81 million to build a national network to monitor movement in the Earth's crust and for other Earth sciences in the next four years.

The program will use more than 3,000 technicians to build a three-dimensional and dynamic "geodetic" network with high precision, the country's National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation announced Tuesday.

The national geodetic network aims to build 360 Global Positioning System reference stations and a satellite-geodesy control network consisting of 4,500 control points, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

The network will ensure people can get timely geodetic information for any point in the country's land area, surveying administration Deputy Directory Li Weisen said.

China lags behind developed countries in terms of surveying and mapping technologies.

While the United States' "geoid" determination network can reach an accuracy of 1 inch, China can only determine geoid at an accuracy of 1 foot in its eastern part and 2 feet in its western region, Xinhua said.

source: http://www.spacedaily.com

Lockheed Martin Selected to Deliver Major Improvements to DoD's ISR Information Sharing Capabilities

Phoenix AZ (SPX) Jun 25, 2012

"The latest DIB upgrade will enable our partners to securely share intelligence faster than ever before."

With the help of Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Department of Defense is making major strides in its ongoing initiative to quickly and efficiently share the vast volume of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data available to users with access to the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS).
The DCGS Multi-Service Execution Team office awarded Lockheed Martin a $2.6 million contract to upgrade the DCGS Integration Backbone, or DIB, the software infrastructure that allows intelligence sharing between national agencies, coalition partners and military services.
The DCGS integrates and draws intelligence data from various manned and unmanned ISR sensors and systems, then correlates that data into a coherent, easily interpreted picture for the end user.

Earth observation for us and our planet

Paris (ESA) Jun 25, 2012

ESA plans to continue to provide operational data delivery to these Conventions as well as for many other applications with the upcoming Sentinel family of satellites being developed under Europe's Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.

The Rio+20 summit on promoting jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable use of our planet's resources closed after three days of talks. During the summit, the role of Earth observation in sustainable development was highlighted.
In 1992, a blueprint to rethink economic growth, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Now, 20 years later, the Rio+20 Summit brought participants from governments, the private sector, non-govermental organisations and other stakeholders once again to Brazil to evaluate the progress being made.
During a side event organised by ESA, the significance of observing Earth from space came into focus, in particular how it improves the assessment and the monitoring of essential climate change, biodiversity and land degradation variables.
Earth-observing satellites allow for efficient, reliable and affordable monitoring of our planet from global to local scales. In many cases, it is the only way to obtain trend information on essential environmental variables.
The large volume of data acquired from over 30 years of satellite observations gives scientists a unique and detailed view of the changing physical characteristics of the Earth surface, sampled at a rate impossible to obtain with only in-situ observations.
The strong contributions that space observations can bring to environmental monitoring have now been recognised by the Rio Convention bodies: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Landsat Sets the Standard for Maps of World's Forests

by Aries Keck for NASA's Earth Science News Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 19, 2012

NASA's Earth-observing fleet of satellites provides a worldwide and unbiased view with standardized scientific data - information crucial for tracking the health of the world's forests. Countries like Brazil are using data from NASA satellites to track and measure their forests in advance of a United Nations effort to reduce climate change by providing "carbon credits" for protected land. This file photo shows a forest in Gabon, Africa. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech).

Countries like Brazil are using data from NASA satellites to track and measure their forests in advance of a United Nations effort to reduce climate change by providing "carbon credits" for protected land. The concept is known as REDD+, which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. It includes monitoring forest degradation and efforts in conservation and sustainable management.
"REDD+ aims to make forests more valuable standing than they would be cut down, by creating a financial value for the carbon stored in trees," says Yemi Katerere, head of the United Nations' UN-REDD Programme Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland. "It creates an incentive for developing countries to reduce carbon emissions by protecting, better managing and wisely using their forest resources, contributing to the global fight against climate change."
REDD+ will be a major topic of discussion during this week's Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20. Images and data acquired by Landsat satellites are increasingly becoming an accepted approach for anyone hoping to have a long-term view of the health of the world's forests.
"For example Brazil is using Landsat data from 1996 to 2005 to create a baseline for tracking future forest coverage," says Doug Morton, a NASA Landsat researcher at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Consistently gathering data about our planet since 1972, the Landsat Program is a series of Earth observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Landsat's views of Earth are at a 30 by 30 meter (32.8 yard) resolution, about the size of a baseball diamond. "That's a pretty appropriate scale for doing country-wide estimates of forest change," Morton says.

ESA Agrees To Press Ahead with 2013 Sentinel Launch

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By Peter B. de Selding

Volker Liebig. Credit: ESA photo Enlarge Image

PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) agreed June 14 to proceed with the launch of the Sentinel 1A environmental satellite in late 2013 following an indication — but no commitment — from the European Commission that it will consider operating the satellite and a fleet of others like it, ESA officials said.

The 19-nation ESA will immediately begin negotiations with Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium to secure a three-month launch window for Sentinel 1A starting in October 2013. The satellite will be launched aboard a Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.

ESA and the European Commission — the executive arm of the 27-nation European Union (EU) — have been at loggerheads over Sentinel 1A and the other components of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program for a year.

It is the commission, and not ESA, that agreed to operate GMES starting in 2014 as part of its next seven-year financial package, which begins that year.

But assembling an acceptable package at a time of financial crisis in several EU nations has proved difficult, and the EU Commission proposed removing GMES and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) from the seven-year budget.

That led ESA governments to order the agency not to spend any funds on launching the satellites, since there would not be anyone to pay for their operations once they were in orbit. ESA had said it needed to begin booking Sentinel satellite flights in June.

Multiple protests from individual EU member governments apparently reached the government of Denmark, which holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency.

At an information meeting of EU ministers June 10-11 in Horsen, Denmark, EU governments agreed to place GMES back inside the multiyear financial envelope, whose total budget is expected to be around 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) during the seven-year period.

The Danish proposal is to place GMES alongside ITER and Galileo, the EU’s satellite navigation program, in a special category. Left to be decided is whether this category will be given a single budget, or whether each program will be approved with a separate budget.

The COSMO-SkyMed light on the “GEOHAZARD SUPERSITES”

The data sets of the Italian satellite system, provided by ASI, will allow more detailed investigations into the high risk geophysical areas identified by GEO

12 Jun 2012

The study of major geophysical hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, in which member organizations of GEO (Group on Earth Observation, the intergovernmental organization working towards the establishment of GEOSS, the Global system of Earth Observation Systems) have been involved for many years, has an extra weapon. And it’s an Italian "weapon".

The Earth observation satellite system COSMO-SkyMed, developed by ASI and the Ministry of Defense and consisting of four satellites equipped with X band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), has made data sets for the analysis of these phenomena valuable to "GEOHAZARD SUPERSITES", the GEO project dedicated to the study of geophysical hazard areas.

More precisely, COSMO-SkyMed will provide an annual quota of about 100 images of the Hawaiian area. The choice primarily fell on this particular area because it is one that, thanks to the stream of data provided by the Italian system, has the most complete sets of information: it is therefore the setting from which the most interesting scientific developments can be expected.

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) has thus executed that which was found last November in Lucca during the 25th plenary meeting of CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, International Coordination Committee for Earth Observation satellite missions), which closed the year chaired by Italy, led by the ASI number one, Enrico Saggese.

Anniversary in space - five years of TerraSAR-X

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jun 20, 2012

The German radar satellite TerraSAR-X.

Five years ago on 15 June 2007, the German TerraSAR-X radar satellite was launched from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This marked the beginning of a new era in satellite remote sensing for Germany. Designed to operate for five years, the satellite has now completed its nominal service life but it remains in excellent condition; it is expected to continue functioning for several more years.
"TerraSAR-X has now been operating almost flawlessly for five years. The satellite's propellant consumption has been low, the solar arrays and radar instrument are in good condition, and all of the redundant systems are still available. We could not have hoped for more," says Michael Bartusch, TerraSAR-X mission Project Manager at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Space Administration.

Satellites show less pollution from deforestation

Washington (AFP) June 21, 2012
Satellite data has shown that harmful carbon emissions from forest loss around the world may be up to 70 percent less than prior estimates, US researchers said Thursday.
The findings are based on US space agency satellites and not self-reported estimates provided by individual nations, which have formed the basis for most prior data, said the study in the journal Science.
The result is a picture of gross carbon emissions from forest loss that is about a third of previous estimates for the 2000-2005 period.
None of this data includes any positive effects from forest regrowth.
"These results serve as a more accurate benchmark for monitoring global progress on reducing emissions from deforestation," said the study led by the non-profit environmental group Winrock International in Virginia.
Co-authors came from NASA, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Maryland, Applied GeoSolutions in New Hampshire and the World Bank.
The study used satellite images to systematically match areas of global forest loss to their carbon stocks, or the amount of carbon these regions stored prior to clearing.
Researchers came to a gross emissions estimate of 0.81 billion metric tons of carbon released per year from deforestation.
A separate, prior study that incorporated satellite data with nationally reported estimates to the Global Forest Resources Assessment of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimated 2.22 billion metric tons of emissions per year.
Most published estimates of carbon emission rely on this model, also known as tabular bookkeeping, which was developed in the 1980s. But lead author Nancy Harris said it may be time for a new approach.

Scientists develop first satellite deforestation tracker for whole of Latin America

London UK (SPX) Jun 21, 2012

This shows deforestation around the dry Chaco of Paraguay from 2004-2011. Credit: www.terra-i.org/Karolina Argote/Louis Reymondin.

An international team of researchers in Colombia, the UK, USA and Switzerland have developed the first ever system to monitor deforestation across Latin America in near real-time using satellite data. Preliminary results from the new system reveal that in parts of Colombia, deforestation has increased by 340 per cent since 2004; and over a million hectares of forest have been lost in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay.
The new satellite system, known as Terra-i, is being launched this week in time for the Rio+20 UN environment conference, and is soon to be expanded to cover all tropical regions. Although Brazil has had a sophisticated near real-time deforestation monitoring system in place since 2008, until now there has been no equivalent for the rest of Latin America.
Terra-i has been developed to monitor changes land cover every 16 days and for every 250 metres on the ground, in order to help national governments, conservation organisations and those implementing climate-related policy to assess recent trends in deforestation and emerging hotspots of change.
The system uses data supplied by NASA's MODIS satellite sensor and is the result of collaboration between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the USA and South America, the School of Engineering and Management of Vaud (HEIG-VD) in Switzerland and King's College London.

ArduSat: a real satellite mission that you can be a part of

June 17, 2012

[+]

(credit: ArduSat)

NanoSatisfi is launching a Kickstarter project to send an Arduino-powered satellite into space, and you can send an experiment along with it, DVICE reports.
NanoSatisfi, a tech startup based out of NASA’s Ames Research Center, is designing a low-cost satellite made almost entirely of off-the-shelf (or slightly modified) hobby-grade hardware, launching it quickly, and then using Kickstarter to give you a way to get directly involved.
ArduSat is based on the CubeSat platform, a standardized satellite framework that measures about four inches on a side and weighs under three pounds.
ArduSat will run on Arduino boards, which are open-source microcontrollers that have become wildly popular with hobbyists. The entire Arduino sensor suite is only going to cost about $1,500. The rest of the satellite (the power system, control system, communications system, solar panels, antennae, etc.) will run about $50,000, with the launch itself costing about $35,000.
NanoSatisfi is looking for Kickstarter funding to pay for just the launch of the satellite itself: the funding goal is $35,000.
[ DVice ]
source:  http://www.kurzweilai.net

Teledyne to Develop Space-Based Digital Imaging Capability

Thousand Oaks, CA (SPX) Jun 22, 2012

File image.

Teledyne Technologies has been awarded a Cooperative Agreement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to foster the commercial utilization of the International Space Station.
Under the agreement, Teledyne Brown will develop the Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES), an Earth imaging platform, as part of the company's new commercial space-based digital imaging business.
MUSES is designed to host earth-looking instruments, such as high-resolution digital cameras, and provide precision pointing and other accommodations. It can host up to four instruments simultaneously and offers the ability to change, upgrade, and robotically service those instruments.
Teledyne expects to provide the first commercial imaging system on board the facility. MUSES will help expand the research capability of the space station and provide other commercial companies with a cost-effective means to collect earth images.
Under the terms of the agreement, Teledyne will operate, maintain, and sustain the MUSES and provide services to hosted instruments.
"This new venture combines our rich 50-year history in human space flight with Teledyne's world-class digital imaging expertise to access the growing space-based earth imaging market," said Robert Mehrabian, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Teledyne Technologies.
The MUSES design is based on a flight releasable attachment mechanism, or FRAM, a universal mounting platform that Teledyne Brown has manufactured for over 10 years.
Teledyne Brown is finalizing the design of MUSES and will fabricate, assemble, test, integrate, and qualify the platform for delivery in late 2014 to NASA. Launch of the MUSES system is scheduled to occur in early 2015.

source:  http://www.spacedaily.com

Satellite Sees Smoke from Siberian Fires Reach the U.S. Coast

by Laura Betz for Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 13, 2012

File image.

Fires burning in Siberia recently sent smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into the U.S. and Canada. Images of data taken by the nation's newest Earth-observing satellite tracked aerosols from the fires taking six days to reach America's shores. Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite's Ozone Mapping Profiler Suite (OMPS) tracks aerosols, like this smoke, that are transported by winds across the globe.
The Voice of Russia reported that 11,000 hectares (about 42.4 square miles) of forests in Siberia were on fire in May and that the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations says roughly 80 percent of these fires are intentionally set to clear land for farming.
Colin Seftor, an atmospheric physicist working for Science Systems and Applications, Inc. at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md. studies aerosols using OMPS data and created images from them.

Indra Incorporates Rapideye Satellite Capacity Into Its Earth Observation Service

Madrid, Spain (SPX) Jun 13, 2012

The RapidEye satellites form part of the European Space Agency's catalogue of Category-1 satellites, which is an indication of the international relevance of access to data of this type.

Indra has signed an agreement making it the only company in Spain to market images from RapidEye's constellation of five satellites. This will strengthen the Earth observation service it provides for domestic and international public administrations, companies and organisations that require precise monitoring of a territory.
With this alliance, Indra has improved its range of specific remote sensing products and services for entities that manage natural resources (forest zones, water resources), economic activities related to the environment (agriculture, mining, timber farming, aquaculture), civil engineering, topography, and emergency and public safety management in the event of disasters, in addition to numerous other activities.
The RapidEye satellites form part of the European Space Agency's catalogue of Category-1 satellites, which is an indication of the international relevance of access to data of this type.
The sensors on board the satellites are distinguished by their capacity to provide high resolution images (5 m per pixel) in five bands: red, green, blue, near-infrared and red edge.
Red edge is directly related to the presence of nitrogen both in plants (thanks to their chlorophyll content) and in the ground. Moreover, the programming flexibility, revisit times and prices per km2 provided by these satellites are unparalleled by any other satellites in their class.
All this information will enable Indra to, for example, prepare advanced remote sensing products and services to facilitate the monitoring of crops, providing advance production data, and estimate damage caused by adverse phenomena and the demand for water required in irrigation areas. This information allows events to be predicted and the right decisions to be made in each case.
Thanks to this agreement, Indra has access to images of anywhere in the world taken on a daily basis. Furthermore, it allows Indra to offer its customers images of extensive areas, even on the national and international scales. This capacity will be strengthened with access to a historical archive of images of more than 3 billion km2.

Quantum Mechanics Comes to Infrared Sensing

To get more accurate data on land and water use, the next Landsat Earth observation satellite will use quantum-well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) for more precise remote temperature measurements of the Earth's surface, from which evaporation and transpiration — and thus, water usage — can be deduced. Learn more about the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) and the daunting technical challenges it faces in this video overview.

source:  globalspec.com

First SBIRS Satellite Exceeding Performance Expectations After One Year on Orbit

Sunnyvale CA (SPX) Jun 07, 2012

SBIRS GEO-1 includes highly sophisticated scanning and staring sensors. The scanning sensor will provide a wide area surveillance of missile launches and natural phenomena across the earth, while the staring sensor will be tasked to observe smaller areas of interest with superior sensitivity. The GEO-1 satellite is already delivering data from both its scanning and staring sensors.

The first Lockheed Martin (LMT)-built Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) geosynchronous (GEO-1) satellite, launched on May 7, 2011, is exceeding performance expectations and is on schedule to achieve operational certification later this year.
Data from the U.S Air Force's SBIRS GEO-1 satellite will enhance the military's ability to detect missile launches around the globe, support the nation's ballistic missile defense system, greatly expand technical intelligence gathering capabilities, and bolster situational awareness for warfighters on the battlefield.
Within two months after launch, SBIRS began sharing initial GEO-1 satellite data. Some key performance measures reported by the Air Force include:
+ The GEO-1 sensors are detecting targets 25 percent dimmer than required with an intensity measurement that is 60 percent more accurate than specification.
+ The sensor pointing accuracy is nine times more precise than required.
"The outstanding performance trends seen to date gives us confidence heading into our extensive integrated developmental and operational testing campaign," said Lt Col Ryan Umstattd, SBIRS lead for GEO-1 certification.

European Union Defers GMES Funding Decision

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By Peter B. de Selding

 

The Sentinel 2 satellite will be part of the GMES program. Credit: ESA artist's concept

PARIS — The European Union (EU) on May 29 declined to make a decision on whether the multibillion-dollar GMES Earth observation satellite program should be included in Europe’s next multiyear funding package or find support elsewhere.

Meeting in Brussels, the EU General Affairs Council limited its discussion to the broad lines of its Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) package, which covers EU spending between 2014 and 2020.

The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program, on which the EU and the 19-nation European Space Agency (ESA) have already spent more than 3 billion euros ($4 billion), was left hanging — half inside and half outside the MFF package.

Denmark, which holds the current rotating EU presidency until July 1 — Cyprus comes next for six months — said that nothing definitive about what is in or out of the MFF will be decided until there is full agreement on the entire package.

The proposal adopted by the General Affairs Council identifies several possible scenarios for GMES. In one of them, it is funded inside the MFF. In another, it is funded by all EU nations, by mandatory contributions, but outside the multiyear package.

The European Commission had set GMES funding at 5.8 billion euros between 2014 and 2020 before removing the program from the MFF in June 2011 as a budget-saving gesture.

Since then, several EU governments and senior ESA officials have protested the move, saying GMES’s survival would be threatened if the program were left outside the MFF funding mechanism.

ESA officials had said that they would suspend preparations for the launch of the first GMES satellites, called Sentinels, until the EU Commission sent a clear signal that the program would be funded beyond 2014.

ESA officials had said that to assure a launch of the first Sentinel satellite in mid-2013, ESA would need to contract for the launch in June of this year. ESA officials are under stronger pressure to launch the first Sentinel satellite since Europe’s large Envisat environmental satellite stopped functioning in April.

The EU official said the commission is unlikely to make any decision on GMES until next fall at the earliest.

source: http://spacenews.com

Hosted Payloads Report Sheds Light on Government and Industry Requirements

Paris, France (SPX) May 31, 2012

Through the interview process, Euroconsult found that 25% of industry and 33% of government respondents expressed concerns about prospects for hosted payload launches within the next five years. Nearly all respondents expect a steady flow of hosted payload programs to be launched in 10 years' time, with military communication as the most attractive service application.

Euroconsult has released its latest research report, "Hosted Payloads: The View From Within." Following discussions with the Hosted Payload Alliance (HPA), Euroconsult decided to pursue development of the report in order to identify and assess corresponding and conflicting perspectives from the keystakeholder groups directly involved in hosted payload programs.

Based on an exhaustive survey, the views of eight key stakeholder groups were examined on the basis of risks, opportunities, challenges and requirements related to hosted payloads.

"We have completed more than 40 interviews with both industry and government representatives for our stakeholder survey and five in-depth case studies on U.S., European and Asia-Pacific hosted payloads," said Susan Irwin, President of Euroconsult USA.

"Our interview respondents were well-positioned to provide insights, as 84% have been directly involved in a hosted payload program. Moreover, of these programs nearly half have already been launched, so they were able to discuss the full life cycle from planning to service operation."

"This report marks HPA's first educational endeavor," said Don Thoma, HPA Chairman. "We believe that this study truly furthers the initial goal of the Hosted Payload Alliance: To act as a source of subject-matter expertise to educate stakeholders in the public and private sectors on the numerous opportunities for hosted payloads on commercial launch spacecraft."

Although the hosted payload concept dates back to the early seventies, it has only recently turned into a hot debate, with the establishment of industry associations such as the Hosted Payload Alliance augmenting awareness of the benefits of hosted government payloads on commercial satellites.

In parallel, leading industry players are heavily promoting their own hosted payload capability. Due to budget restraints, government agencies around the world are increasingly open to adopting the hosted payload concept.

CryoSat goes to sea

Paris, France (ESA) May 31, 2012

An Earth-orbiting radar cannot see the ocean floor, but it can measure ocean-surface height variations induced by the topography of the ocean floor. The gravitational pull of the seafloor produces minor variations in ocean surface height. Seafloor mapping by ships is much more accurate than radar altimeter mapping, but to date only 10% of the seafloor has been charted this way. A complete mapping of the deep oceans using ships would take 200 ships navigating Earth, 24 hours a day, for an entire year at a cost of billions of dollars. Mapping using satellite radars can cover a larger area in a shorter amount of time. When interesting features are discovered in satellite measurements, they can later be surveyed in fine detail by ships. Credits: Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

CryoSat was launched in 2010 to measure sea-ice thickness in the Arctic, but data from the Earth-observing satellite have also been exploited for other studies. High-resolution mapping of the topography of the ocean floor is now being added to the ice mission's repertoire. The main objective of the polar-orbiting CryoSat is to measure the thickness of polar sea ice and monitor changes in the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

But the satellite's radar altimeter is not only able to detect tiny variations in the height of the ice but it can also measure sea level.

The topography of the ocean surface mimics the rises and dips of the ocean floor due to the gravitational pull. Areas of greater mass, such as underwater mountains, have a stronger pull, attracting more water and producing a minor increase in ocean-surface height.

Therefore, instruments that measure sea-surface height incidentally map the ocean floor in previously uncharted areas.

There have been several recent global gravity missions, such as ESA's GOCE satellite, that provide extraordinarily accurate measurements of gravity at the spatial resolution of hundreds of kilometres.

But CryoSat's radar altimeter can sense the gravity field at the ocean surface, so that seafloor characteristics at scales of 5-10 km are revealed. This is the first altimeter in 15 years to map the global marine gravity field at such a high spatial resolution.

Recent studies at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, USA, found that the range precision of CryoSat is at least 1.4 times better than the US's Geosat or ESA's ERS-1.

They estimate that this improved range precision combined with three or more years of ocean mapping will result in global seafloor topography - bathymetry - that is 2-4 times more accurate than measurements currently available.

"We know more about the surfaces of Venus and Mars than we do about the bathymetry of deep oceans," said David Sandwell from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US.

"This new mapping from CryoSat will revolutionise our understanding of ocean floor tectonics and reveal, perhaps, 10 000 previously uncharted undersea volcanoes."

Most satellite radar altimeters such as the one on the joint CNES/NASA/Eumetsat/NOAA Jason-2 follow repeated ground-tracks every 10 days to monitor the changes in ocean topography associated with ocean currents and tides.

CryoSat's 369-day repeat cycle provides a dense mapping of the global ocean surface at a track spacing of over 4 km. Three to four years of data from CryoSat can be averaged to reduce the 'noise' due to currents and tides and better chart the permanent topography related to marine gravity.

Related LinksCryoSat at ESAEarth Observation News - Suppiliers, Technology and Application

source: http://www.spacedaily.com