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.