April 15th, 2012 Category: Earth Observation

Spain and Portugal - April 8th, 2012

Radar image of the Envisat satellite

On the 8th of April, the European Space Agency unexpectedly lost control with its Envisat satellite, which has been transmitting data for the last 10 years and has completed over 50,000 orbits of our planet. This image of the Iberian Peninsula was generated from the last data trasmitted by the satellite. ESA’s mission control is working to re-establish contact with the satellite.

While it is known that Envisat remains in a stable orbit around Earth, efforts to resume contact with the satellite have, so far, not been successful.

From the ground, the German government’s Tracking and Imaging Radar, a 34-meter-diameter dish located near Bonn, took a radar image of Envisat that appears to confirm that the satellite has not broken apart following an in-orbit collision.

Tags: Envisat Iberian Peninsula Portugal Spain | | Leave a comment

August 29th, 2011 Category: Earth Observation, Events

GMES Master Competition - Best Service Challenge

In emergency situations it is necessary to provide a response as quickly as possible. When the type of emergency depends on the use of satellite data, it then becomes necessary to plan their acquisition, processing and distribution, having teams ready 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, to respond to this type of situation.

The Satellite Rapid Response System was created by CHELYS precisely with the intent of making satellite data available as quickly as possible, as images and value-added products.

The constellation of satellites known as GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) that will be launched starting in 2013, thanks to low revisiting times and the planning of the whole mission already present on board the satellite, will allow monitoring of our planet as never seen before.

SRRS is participating in the GMES Masters Competition in the Best Service Challenge. You can visit SRRS at the following link:
gmes.chelys.eu

If you consider this type of service useful, if you like it, if you would like to continue using it with new data that will be made available by GMES, then vote for the service at the following link:
www.gmes-masters.com

It is also important to note that although SRRS is participating in the Emergency Response category, it actually has a much wider range of applications, such as Ocean, Land or Climate Change.

If you have any thoughts regarding the service or ideas on ways to improve it, please leave us a comment.

Tags: Best Service Chelys Competition GMES SRRS | | Leave a comment

October 28th, 2010 Category: Earth Observation, Events

ESA Envisat-1

The Envisat mission was launched in March 2002 for 5-year nominal lifetime. Consequently the on-board hydrazine capacity was designed for a 5-year duration operation. Careful management of the satellite orbital manoeuvres allowed saving enough hydrazine for operating nominally Envisat for an additional 3.5 years, i.e. until end 2010.

The operations of the Envisat satellite beyond end 2010 require modifying the orbital characteristics of the mission. Careful trading between all possible options led to the selection a new orbit, called the “Envisat Extension Orbit“, which allows:
1) operating the mission for an additional 3 years, with a minimum amount of hydrazine,
2) ensuring the continuity of the maximum number of Envisat applications, with the exception of ASAR interferometry which will be degraded.

The Envisat extension orbit will be implemented through an altitude decrease of 17.4 km which will be reached through different orbital manoeuvres starting on 22 October 2010.

Consequently, the Envisat data flow will be suspended during the period 22 October to 01 November 2010. The data flow will resume on 02 November 2010.

The Envisat mission represents an important goal in the field of Earth Observation. Chelys will follow the entire operation attentively, as we are also the real time image generation software (Miravi) provider for the Meris sensor. This post will be updated in the next few days in order to provide a preview of the Envisat images at the end of the maneuver as soon as its sensors are reactivated.

Update

The last OCM (Orbit Control Manoeuvre) finished in time without problems on October 26th. The satellite instruments are gradually resuming their nominal condition and the dissemination to the users is started. However the ESA disclaimer is clear: users are invited to discard such data until November 2nd, 2010 as they are destined only for the ESA internal verification.

We started generating the first images using the “new” data, and the results, despite some geolocation problems, are very promising. Here below are some images generated after the completion of the manoeuvre.

Argentina from Andes to Ocean (ASAR Image Mode)

Richat Structure in the Sahara Desert (MERIS Full Resolution)

France, Spain and Pyrenees (MERIS Full Resolution)

Strait of Gibraltar (MERIS Full Resolution)

Tags: Andes Mountains Argentina ASAR Chelys Envisat ESA Extension Orbit Meris Miravi Pyrenees Richat Structure Strait of Gibraltar | | Leave a comment

October 2nd, 2009 Category: Climate Change, Earth Observation, Image of the day, Mosaics

FAPAR Index - Source and Processed products

FAPAR - Source Product

FAPAR - Processed Product

Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) acquires multi-spectral imagery of the Earth, and is used to monitor the state and evolution of the terrestrial vegetation cover.

In particular, the MERIS Global Vegetation Index (MGVI), which corresponds to the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR), is generated operationally as a standard level-2 product, using the radiation measured by MERIS over land surfaces.

This bio-geophysical product plays a critical role in the plant photosynthetic process and is regularly used in diagnostic and predictive models to compute the primary productivity of the vegetation canopies.

FAPAR has been established as a fundamental surface parameter by international organizations including the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), charged with providing data on the Earth’s climate system.

Chelys has developed a new processor that is able to process and directly extract the FAPAR index from raw data (level-0) at a reduced or full resolution (but also from level-1), generating the relative false-colored image just a few seconds after the original data is ingested.

In the next few weeks, a processor that will systematically generate these vegetation index images will be incorporated in the SRRS (Satellite Rapid Response System). As soon as enough images have been collected, it will be possible to generate mosaics as well.

Tags: Chelys Envisat FAPAR GCOS Meris MGVI Processor Raw Data SRRS Vegetation Index | | Leave a comment

April 3rd, 2009 Category: Earth Observation

Figure 1 - 3D Model

These images of Reunion Island provide a clear example of the improvements made through the use of the orthorectification technique.
The original product has been processed, orthorectified and projected using the Chelys SRRS (Satellite Rapid Response System). The orthorectification process is now fully automatic and transparent. The Digital Elevation Model used is the Nasa SRTM v4 (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission).

The proper DEM is selected according to the image resolution: from 15 arcseconds up to 1 arcsecond (only available for USA). The performance of the system are kept in real-time. The entire correction process takes less than 20 seconds per product.

Tags: 3D ASAR Chelys DEM Digital Elevation Model Envisat Ground Range Nasa Orthorectification Radar Reunion Island SAR Satellite Rapid Response System Slant Range SRRS SRTM | | Comments (14)

March 4th, 2009 Category: Earth Observation, Mosaics

Two weeks ago, we published a Meris FR Mosaic of Italy. The large number of interested users has led us to publish the entire Mosaic of Central/Eastern Europe. Starting today and over the next few weeks we will update the Mosaic section and the present post as soon as a new country is inserted.

Tags: Albania Austria Bosnia Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Germany Hungary Italy Macedonia Meris Montenegro Mosaic MOSRI Poland Romania Serbia Slovenia SRRS Switzerland Ukraine | | Leave a comment

December 3rd, 2008 Category: Earth Observation, Events

The 4th International Workshop on Science and Applications of SAR Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry - POLinSAR 2009

The European Space Agency is organising POLinSAR 2009, the 4th International Workshop on Science and Applications of SAR Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry, which will be hosted in ESRIN, Frascati, Italy on 26-30 January 2009.

Objectives

The main objectives of the workshop are to:

• Provide a forum for scientific exchange and to initiate and encourage close collaboration between individual research groups
• Exploitation of spaceborne missions
• Present new results from the latest studies in the field and to assess the state-of-the-art
• Present polarimetric and interferometric results from ALOS PALSAR, RADARSAT-2 and TerraSAR-X
• Assess the available Pol-InSAR tools and datasets
• Review the bio-geophysical parameters that can be retrieved and their accuracy
• Make recommendations for algorithm development and new products, future missions and applications
• Report on progress/status of recommendations of PolInSAR 2007

The workshop will focus on theory and methods in the fields of SAR Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry around the following theme:

1. SAR Polarimetric Interferometry (Pol-InSAR)
2. Theoretical Modelling
3. Applications of SAR Polarimetry
   • Land: Forest, Agriculture, Environment (Urban, global change, land cover), Wetlands
   • Ocean: Pollution Monitoring, Ship detection, Ocean Parameters Retrieval, Sea Features
   • Cryosphere: Snow, Land Ice and Sea Ice Monitoring
   • Hazards: Fire Monitoring, Volcanoes, Flooding, Earthquake
4. Polarimetry and Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI)
5. Compact Polarimetry
6. ALOS PALSAR, TerraSAR-X, RADARSAT-2, COSMO-SkyMed results
7. Future Spaceborne missions for Pol-InSAR
8. Airborne Pol-InSAR campaigns

Tags: ALOS ASAR ESA Esrin International Workshop Italy PALSAR Polarimetric Interferometry Polinsar RADARSAT-2 Rome SAR SAR Polarimetry TerraSAR-X | | Leave a comment

August 28th, 2008 Category: Earth Observation, Mosaics

MOSRI Mosaic - First Half 2008 - Meris Medium Resolution

The importance of satellite data is becoming greater every day thanks to technological progress that has made technology which once could only be obtained through the use of supercomputers, available to the general public.

Today, public networks (Internet) allow us to transmit huge amounts of data in a way that permits the distribution of satellite images which, due to their dimensions, could only be distributed on physical media (DVD, Tapes, etc.) until a few years ago. At present, new 3D visualization tools (Google Earth™, NASA WorldWind, etc.) allow us to depict information with a completely new appearance and to interact with it in a more intuitive way. All this, in addition to an increased sense of global awareness, has increased interest in images of our planet as seen from space.

Tags: Meris Mosaics MOSRI | | Comments (1)

August 17th, 2008 Category: Earth Observation, Events

The 2008 Joint PI Symposium of the ALOS Data Nodes follows the First Symposium, held in 2007 in Kyoto, Japan. The event, organised by ESA in cooperation with JAXA, ASF, GA and GISTDA, will be held on the island of Rhodes, Greece, from 3 to 7 November 2008.

The Symposium will offer a forum to exchange views on technical and scientific issues on the data exploitation. It will provide updates of the satellite status and will allow to present the progress in recent research of ongoing projects.

Tags: ALOS AVNIR2 ESA Jaxa | | Leave a comment