Government & Industry to Combine for 1,150 Satellites Over Next Decade

Paris, Montreal, Washington D.C., November 4, 2013

 

New Satellite Systems from 30 Emerging Space Markets

According to Euroconsult's recently published research report, Satellites to be Built & Launched by 2022: World Market Survey, 115 satellites will be launched on average each year worldwide over the next 10 years (2013-2022). As several commercial and government constellations will be launched into low earth orbit (LEO) in the coming years, up to 140 satellites per year are expected between 2015 and 2017, decelerating to 100 units afterwards.

Revenues from the manufacture and launch of these 1,150 satellites over the decade will be worth $236 billion, up 26% from those generated by the 810 satellites launched in the past ten years (2003-2012). Revenue growth between the two decades is lower than the growth in number of satellites since many small satellites are being developed, requiring shorter development time and lower launch costs.

Governments’ dominance of the space industry driven by operational satellite systems and technology development

Governments worldwide will be responsible for two-thirds of the 1,150 satellites to be launched and for nearly three-quarters of the $236 billion expected in revenues. Over 90% of the government market value will remain concentrated in the 15 countries with an established space industry. New satellite systems in 30 emerging space countries will also create a market of over $1 billion on average per year. According to Rachel Villain, Principal Advisor at Euroconsult, “More and more governments are acquiring operational telecommunications and Earth observation (EO) satellite systems to support socio-economic development in their country and to sell satellite services abroad.”

With 375 satellites to be launched in the next decade, EO is the largest satellite application for governments to support ranging policy objectives, such as in environment monitoring, defense, natural resources monitoring and meteorology. The satellite demand of civilian government agencies will be much stronger than that of military agencies with military space remaining concentrated in a limited number of countries. 

New method to study mountainous terrains with satellite imagery

 05/11/13
JRC scientists obtained remarkable results in correcting surface shapes of satellite imagery to study mountainous terrains, with a combination of topographic correction algorithms and statistical methods. The JRC presented its new method in a recently published article in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

The JRC presented a new method to correct surface shapes of satellite imagery to study mountainous terrains.© EU, 2009 (A-M. Petrescu)

Proper pre-processing of remote sensing imagery is required to limit possible discrepancies due to atmospheric, radiometric and topographic effects, such as confusion between clouds and bright soils. Whereas most of these factors have been studied and their correction methods established, topographically induced illumination differences, confusion between dark shadows and water bodies for example, are still being investigated and there is no universal technique widely accepted in the remote sensing community.
To fill this gap, the JRC tested two digital elevation models (3D representations of a terrain's surface), a pre-classification/stratification approach to identify the strata according to the vegetation covers and several statistical correction methods, in study areas from 3 continents (Asia, Africa and South America) with different land covers. The pre-classification/stratification approach was used to split the different land cover types into strata which were corrected individually with the selected topographic correction method in order to achieve better reduction of the terrain effects (for example illumination effects due to the orientation of the slope, occlusions by mountains, …). Images from four different sensors systems were tested and processed to encompass different land cover types, temporal variations in solar illumination and a range of reliefs.
The obtained methodology represents an optimal solution for an operational topographic correction system with global dataset processing capabilities. Some improvements could still be made to increase the separation accuracy among the strata and the correctness of water detection.

Related Links

• Article: Fast and robust topographic correction method for medium resolution satellite imagery using a stratified approach

source:  http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc

GeoCento + ESA—Find What You Seek (Imagery)

A new service to make satellite Earth images easily available to customers is being created by UK start-up company GeoCento, an alumnus of ESA Business Incubation Centre Harwell. Their web-based service EarthImages will target the growing demand to have better and faster tools to search and access imagery from the wide range of Earth observation satellites.

The highlight imageshows the sand seas of the Namib Desert on January 7, 2012.
Image courtesy of KARI/ESA.

“With many Earth imaging satellites already in orbit and the launch according to our estimates in the coming decade of over 250 new ones with an increasingly sophisticated range of instruments, it is not easy to find the best images with exactly the information needed for a specific case,” said GeoCento Managing Director Kim Partington.

Researchers Turn to Technology to Discover a Novel Way of Mapping Landscapes

File image.

by Dawn Fuller for UC News Cincinnati OH (SPX) Nov 05, 2013 University of Cincinnati researchers are blending technology with tradition, as they discover new and improved methods for mapping landscapes. The research is newly published in the Journal of Applied Geography (Vol. 45, December 2013) by UC authors Jacek Niesterowicz, a doctoral student in the geography department, and Professor Tomasz Stepinski, the Thomas Jefferson Chair of Space Exploration in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences (A&S).
The researchers say the analysis is the first to use a technology from a field of machine vision to build a new map of landscape types - a generalization of a popular land cover/land use map. Whereas land cover/land use pertains to physical material at, or utilization of, the local piece of Earth's surface, a landscape type pertains to a pattern or a mosaic of different land covers over a larger neighborhood.
Machine vision is a subfield of computer science devoted to analyzing and understanding the content of images. A role of a machine vision algorithm is to "see" and interpret images as close to human vision interpretation as possible. Previous uses of the technology have focused on medicine, industry and government, ranging from robotics to face detection.

Researchers Turn to Technology to Discover a Novel Way of Mapping Landscapes

File image.

by Dawn Fuller for UC News Cincinnati OH (SPX) Nov 05, 2013 University of Cincinnati researchers are blending technology with tradition, as they discover new and improved methods for mapping landscapes. The research is newly published in the Journal of Applied Geography (Vol. 45, December 2013) by UC authors Jacek Niesterowicz, a doctoral student in the geography department, and Professor Tomasz Stepinski, the Thomas Jefferson Chair of Space Exploration in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences (A&S).
The researchers say the analysis is the first to use a technology from a field of machine vision to build a new map of landscape types - a generalization of a popular land cover/land use map. Whereas land cover/land use pertains to physical material at, or utilization of, the local piece of Earth's surface, a landscape type pertains to a pattern or a mosaic of different land covers over a larger neighborhood.
Machine vision is a subfield of computer science devoted to analyzing and understanding the content of images. A role of a machine vision algorithm is to "see" and interpret images as close to human vision interpretation as possible. Previous uses of the technology have focused on medicine, industry and government, ranging from robotics to face detection.

Sensor Payloads Lift Off With Availability of Complete Hyperspectral Airborne Solution

File image.

Fitchburg MA (SPX) Nov 05, 2013 Responding to customer demand across the remote sensing industry for small, light, and power-efficient spectral imaging solutions, Headwall has announced availability of a completely integrated airborne solution that provides users with unmatched levels of hyperspectral image acquisition and data-processing performance.
The core element of the solution comprises Headwall's Micro-Hyperspec hyperspectral sensor, which is based on the Company's patented aberration-corrected sensor design. The use of aberration-corrected diffractive optics designed and manufactured by Headwall allows the Micro-Hyperspec sensor to achieve outstanding performance: very high signal-to-noise characteristics, a very wide field-of-view, and high spatial and spectral resolution.
Headwall engineers designed the hyperspectral airborne configuration to optimize configuration size, weight, and power (SWaP), which are each critical considerations for deployment on manned aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
Elements of the solution include a GPS unit, a compact, lightweight Hyperspec Data Processing Unit, and airborne-specific hyperspectral software providing image acquisition, sensor control, and synchronization for flight-plan efficiency. Every element of the solution is optimized for airborne use, in platforms ranging from small, hand-launched UAVs to fixed-wing aircraft and multi-rotor airframes.
"All across the remote-sensing landscape we're seeing a need for precise, accurate, data-rich hyperspectral imagery using increasingly smaller airborne platforms," said David Bannon, CEO of Headwall.
"Customers need solutions that are small and light, and they need them to be fully integrated between the sensor, software, GPS/INS, and data-processing hardware." Because Headwall's hyperspectral sensors run at very high frame rates to capture exceptionally precise imagery, Hyperspec data processing software is optimized for the task.
"We found that many of our customers were spending a lot of valuable time assembling the necessary payload components," said Mr. Bannon. The Headwall team worked collaboratively with leading researchers to offer an airborne configuration that is ready to fly out-of-the-box.
Typical uses for hyperspectral sensing from airborne platforms include precision agriculture, oil and gas exploration, forestry management, and environmental monitoring.
source:  http://www.spacedaily.com

Astrium partners with information and analytics specialist IHS to support GEOINT community

File image.

Englewood CO (SPX) Nov 04, 2013 Astrium has announced that the GEO-Information activities of Astrium Services have entered into a partnership agreement with IHS, the leading global source of defence and security information, to deliver satellite imagery and services for intelligence analysis and reporting.
Leveraging this partnership will enable IHS to provide new insights and even more up-to-date and detailed information, meeting demand for fused intelligence sources to tap easily accessed information. Invariably, geospatial data plays a critical role in developing intelligence, formulating strategic policy and driving operational interventions.
Astrium Services brings to IHS the capability to deliver imagery and defence-oriented services based on unique access to the only multi-resolution imaging satellite.
Astrium's offering has been specifically developed to support the high currency requirements of the GEOINT community, including the many and varied challenges faced by military and intelligence agencies.
Under the agreement, Astrium Services will provide newly acquired imagery from its Pleiades, SPOT and TerraSAR-X satellites for use as primary sources and fusion with open source information, for actionable intelligence.
It will also provide access to the GO Monitor service, which delivers reliable surveillance and change information anywhere on Earth.
By fusing IHS insight with Astrium Services imagery, IHS analysts will be able to deliver broader contextual analysis and more granular insight in order to meet the needs of business and national security professionals.
With more than 100 years of history as Jane's, IHS has a reputation built on products such as IHS Jane's Fighting Ships, IHS Jane's All the World's Aircraft and IHS Jane's Defence Weekly.
source:  http://www.spacedaily.com

Seeing in the dark

This is a photo of the novel infrared remote sensing system built by researchers at two Chinese universities. Credit: Tianxu Zhang/Zheng Fang.

Washington DC (SPX) Nov 01, 2013 Thermal infrared (IR) energy is emitted from all things that have a temperature greater than absolute zero. Human eyes, primarily sensitive to shorter wavelength visible light, are unable to detect or differentiate between the longer-wavelength thermal IR "signatures" given off both by living beings and inanimate objects.
While mechanical detection of IR radiation has been possible since Samuel Pierpont Langley invented the bolometer in 1880, devices that also can recognize and identify an IR source after detection have been more challenging to develop.
In a recent paper in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, researchers at two Chinese universities describe a novel instrument that successfully does both tasks with extremely high sensitivity by splitting the IR radiation given off by an object into a long-wave portion for detection and a mid-wave portion that can be spectrally analyzed for accurate identification.
Conventional remote sensing systems share a single sensor for both imaging and spectral data processing. The new instrument designed by the Chinese researchers has separate sensors for each task and uses a dichoric beamsplitter to divide the IR signal from an object into two components, a long-wave IR (LWIR) beam and a mid-wave IR (MWIR) beam.
"The LWIR beam goes to the imaging sensor and the MWIR to the spectrum recognition sensor," said Tianxu Zhang, corresponding author on the RSI paper and a physicist at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Working in the shadows: Phil Pressel and the Hexagon spy camera

by Roger Guillemette and Dwayne Day 

Monday, October 28, 2013

The history of the Cold War is filled with stories of people who fled persecution in Europe or elsewhere and ended up working in the American defense and intelligence fields. Physicists like Leo Szilard and Hans Bethe fled Germany to work on the Manhattan Project.

Phil Pressel points to some of his handiwork on a Hexagon satellite on display at the National Air and Space Museum in 2011. (credit: R. Guillemette)

Michael Yarymovych spent part of his childhood in a German work camp and fled the Russian attack on Berlin only to later travel to the United States and eventually serve as Chief Scientist of the US Air Force. Pedro Rustan escaped Castro’s Cuba by swimming across Guantanamo Bay, became a colonel in the US Air Force, and eventually developed advanced technology for American intelligence satellites. And Phil Pressel endured the Nazi occupation in occupied Belgium and France, traveled to the United States, and two decades later helped to design one of the most powerful satellite reconnaissance cameras ever built—a secret he kept for 46 years, sharing it with no one, not even his wife, from the time he first went to work for the Perkin-Elmer optics company in 1965.

Tears welling in his eyes, the Belgian boy who was hidden from the Nazis by the French Resistance in a picturesque mountain town took his wife’s hand and humbly pointed to the Hexagon’s engineering marvel: twin panoramic rotating cameras.

On September 17, 2011, the then 74-year-old Holocaust survivor and kidney transplant recipient patiently waited in line with his wife as the doors opened to a large tent structure at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center. His life-long secret, an integral component in one of the United States’ most closely guarded assets, a behemoth larger than a school bus, was now on display for the whole world to see: the just-declassified KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite.
Tears welling in his eyes, the Belgian boy who was hidden from the Nazis by the French Resistance in a picturesque mountain town—a story that he recounted in a 2004 book—took his wife’s hand and humbly pointed to the Hexagon’s engineering marvel: twin panoramic rotating cameras that exposed the former Soviet Union’s hidden missile bases, bomber airfields and submarine holding pens.
Incorporated into the belly of the giant spacecraft was the “optical bar” camera system that produced incredibly valuable intelligence data for his adopted country, detailed imagery that helped prevent a cataclysmic World War III between the global superpowers. Phil Pressel and his colleagues designed the cameras.
Pressel has now published a book about developing the Hexagon camera, Meeting The Challenge: The Hexagon KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite. It is a detailed, behind-the-scenes account of designing the most complex mechanical device ever flown in space, and one of the most powerful reconnaissance cameras ever built. Pressel, after getting permission from the CIA to write the book and agreeing not to have it published until after declassification of the program, started the book years before the program was declassified, not knowing if he would ever be allowed to publish it (see “Eyes of the Big Bird”, The Space Review, October 14, 2013.)

Indra leads the european G-Sextant earth observation project

October 16, 2013 ( Spain

• With an budget of more than €5.7 million, Indra coordinates this R&D initiative aimed at developing new geospatial information services and products 
• These products, based on satellite images, will support the efforts of the European External Action Service and other users
• Indra has become an international reference in the development of the most advanced Earth observation technologies  

The European Commission, through the Research Executive Agency (REA), has entrusted Indra with the G-SEXTANT R&D project aimed at developing different products and services that cover the geospatial information needs of the European External Action Service and of other users. This project includes an investment of more than €5.7 million and its development will last through the first quarter of 2015.
G-SEXTANT forms part of the European Copernicus programme (previously referred to as GMES, Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), one of the European Commission's most important initiatives in the space sector. Copernicus will enable the EU to observe the Earth in order to monitor the environment's evolution and to manage security and emergencies.
Indra leads the consortium comprised by companies, research centres and European organisations that are working on this project. The objective of G-SEXTANT is to develop pre-operation products and services for observing the Earth.
These products have been conceived to provide support in humanitarian crises, to monitor conflicts, to detect illegal crops, to provide border surveillance, etc. G-SEXTANT will also make it possible to improve existing products and services, and to develop a standardised solutions portfolio.
The new services and products will provide geospatial information to support the decision making efforts of the European External Action Service (EEAS) and of other European agencies and services.

NGA opens doors to GEOINT app store

By Greg Slabodkin
Oct 22, 2013

Leveraging mobile devices to literally put the "power of GEOINT" in the hands of warfighters is the vision of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The agency's move to embrace mobility is most visible in the creation of the GEOINT App Store, loosely modeled after commercial storefronts that provide downloadable apps for smartphones and tablets in the three security domains — unclassified, secret and top secret.
"The idea of an end user being able to download an app that they need right now is critical," said Robert Zitz, senior vice president and chief systems architect for the National Security Sector at Leidos, the company formed after the split of SAIC in September 2013. "It's a great example of using and building upon commercial technologies and approaches.”
To date, more than 270 apps are available to the intelligence community through the online platform. According to the 2013-2017 NGA Strategy report, "Recognizing that GEOINT data, products, services, and knowledge are most relevant when the information is easily accessible, NGA is committed to making its content discoverable, accessible and usable in multiple security domains."
By 2017, the agency wants to empower the GEOINT community through "greatly improved access to varied content and applications," allowing users to "create and consume GEOINT content anytime on the device of their choice." That approach mirrors similar efforts across DOD.
Mark Riccio, director of future experience for NGA's Xperience Directorate, formerly the agency's Online GEOINT Services Directorate, acknowledged that previously NGA did not necessarily support the provision of mobile type apps. "We realize now that with the speed at which information is made available and the way that consumers want to use that kind of data, that the self-service model is really the driving force to get information in the hands of those that need it in a timely fashion,” he said.
Some duplication is inevitable, observers said. "I have some concerns that they are going to have too many apps that do the same thing. That's going to be a challenge for the agency and others to make sure they have the right vetting process," noted Scott Simmons, CACI’s executive director of geospatial solutions.
source:  http://www.geospatialworld.net & http://defensesystems.com

Time is ripe for fire detection satellite, say Berkeley scientists

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | October 22, 2013

BERKELEY — As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, University of California, Berkeley, scientists say it’s time to give them a 21^st century tool: a fire-spotting satellite.

An artist’s concept of the FUEGO satellite, which would snap digital photos of the Western U.S. every few seconds in search of hot spots that could be newly ignited fires. Image by R. E. Lafever, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Such a satellite could view the Western states almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds in search of hot spots that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property.
The UC Berkeley scientists have designed such a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, written analysis software to minimize false alarms, and even given it a name – the Fire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous Orbit (FUEGO). They’re hopeful it can be built for several hundred million dollars, either by government or private entities.