Copernicus Contributing Missions

Airbus Defense & Space, as a world leader in earth observation satellite imagery, operates a unique portfolio of satellites covering the optical and the radar domains over a wide range of resolution including: Pléiades1A & 1B (owned by CNES), Spot6&7 (owned by Airbus Defense & Space), TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X (owned by DLR and Airbus Defense & Space).

Pléiades1A & 1B and Spot6&7 offer optical imagery in a range of resolution from 0.5 meter to 6 meters with exceptional performances in terms of quality, acquisition capacity and reactivity.

ESA and Airbus Defense & Space are working together to make those satellites available to a wide community of users through two distinct programs:

- the Copernicus Data Warehouse program, funded by the European Commission, provides satellite imagery to the Copernicus services and to European institutional users for the implementation of their environmental and security policies;

- the Third Party Missions (TPM) program is dedicated to ESA's science users.

The technical and operational characteristics of the satellites are presented as well as the architecture of the ground segments and their customization to fit ESA and Copernicus requirements. Interoperability between the ground segments is analyzed, covering all the major functions (mission planning, catalogue, ordering). Examples of applications are discussed, demonstrating the interest of very high and high resolution optical imagery in areas like land cover mapping, urban planning, forest monitoring, emergency, maritime surveillance and border surveillance.

TerraSAR-X/ TanDEM-X: The Past- The Present – The Future

A brief overview on the past and the future developments of TerraSAR-X & TanDEM-X missions and derived products.

TerraSAR-X radar technology is credited to be the most accurate commercial radar sensor currently available for innovative applications. The TerraSAR-X mission is the only source of commercially available very high resolution radar imagery. In this paper the unique characteristics of the TerraSAR-X & TanDEM-X imaging modes and products will be described with respect to daily operational work.

Extending this success, this paper presents the constellation of TerraSAR-X like radar sensors. The addition of the Spanish PAZ satellite (operator: HisdeSat) into the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X orbit will bring a unique radar constellation to the market. The benefits of this planned constellation mission shall be enormous leading to as short as possible revisit times with a promise of excellent quality and reliability. On-top of the traditional constellation benefits, this cooperation program also demonstrates a novel approach to coordinate international space missions for all stakeholder benefits.

With respect to current assessments, the satellites are expected to continue well beyond 2018. New mission scenarios are currently under evaluation at Airbus Defence and Space, taking into consideration the market needs and considering fast changing external constraints. Looking back to successful years TerraSAR services will be continued beyond the current system generation.

The following key aspects of the missions will be described including a short side note on the current development activities.

Overview on the operational imaging modes

SAR based Applications

World in 3D: Some aspects on WorldDEM™

Constellation Concept of Operations

Looking into the future

SAR base Applications

Without any border or access limitations spaceborne missions are dedicated for monitoring of huge areas or of infrastructure elements and installations in remote regions. Today, critical infrastructure is a popular term used by authorities to describe assets which are important to secure the daily life and economic stability.

Using the inherent SAR characteristics, phase information and amplitude, small changes and even small objects within the critical infrastructure can be recognized and distinguished reliably in SAR imagery. The high level of detail, thanks to higher spatial resolution in combination with fewer speckles, lead to a higher reliability for the exploitation of SAR based information extraction. Airbus Defence and Space’s R&D activities focus on the following fields of application:

Urban Sprawl and Growth (Sector: Emergency Service/Health)

Carbon Stock Change Assessment (Sector: Food and Agriculture)

Poaching Monitoring (Sector: Commercial Facilities)

Iceberg & Ship Detection (Sector: Transportation Systems)

These procedures are technically demanding, however they offer substantially improved and new information content. New workflows are evaluated and developed to convert such procedures into an operational environment.

Remote Sensing Applications were so far based on satellite tasking, low repetitiveness and unguaranteed data availability. An upcoming constellation of satellites from Planet Labs is about to change this situation and offers a daily systematic coverage of the entire landmass of our planet.

This is a real breakthrough in supporting remote sensing applications: Existing applications such as Agriculture, forestry or REDD+ will obviously benefit from this abundance of data; and, overall, one can ask himself: “What would I do if I had access to data over the entire world every day?” This opens an infinite range of opportunities. We expect a wide range of new players, not currently active in remote sensing, to make use of this easy to access flow of data.

As examples: Imagine you may monitor fields and have a look on changes every day or monitor daily activities in refugee camps, even watch how Earth is changing every 24h, in having the full picture in 3m resolution.

This paper examines the results of the partnership between ESA and MDA in supporting Copernicus and the Third Party Mission (TPM) programmes and the complementary role of RADARSAT to the Sentinel missions. Furthermore, it presents the ever evolving RADARSAT products and services and provides a look into the future at the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM).

The RADARSAT‑2 mission has been delivering imagery to the Copernicus programme since June 2009.  RADARSAT-2 imagery and products support sea ice monitoring, ship detection/navigation, and asset safety monitoring in the northern seas. The key requirement for maritime surveillance applications is the near real-time delivery of the exploitation information to the end user.  During the course of the programme, MDA has proven to be a dependable and reliable partner in delivering timely, high quality imagery. In addition to sea ice monitoring applications, substantial volumes of RADARSAT‑2 data have also been provided to the Copernicus users to support emergency response for landslide monitoring, critical asset monitoring, and mapping applications.

As a participant in the Data Warehouse 2014-2020 contract, the RADARSAT-2 mission is working alongside Sentinel-1 in providing data for Copernicus users. With RADARSAT-2, ESA has an opportunity to complement the SAR data collected by Sentinel-1. While Sentinel-1 will provide regular and routine coverage over much of the globe, there are many regions that will not receive regular coverage. There are also many users that desire access to higher data resolution than Sentinel-1 can provide. By leveraging the capacity of RADARSAT-2, its revisit time and coverage, and securing access to supplemental and complementary data, ESA can respond more efficiently to the needs of all European remote sensing users.

In addition to Copernicus, MDA provides RADARSAT-2 data through the ESA TPM programme through which ESA supports high-quality innovative projects.

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) is the evolution of the RADARSAT Program with the objective of assuring data continuity, improved operational use of Synthetic Aperture Radar and improved system reliability.  RCM will be launched in 2018, in time to ensure that there is no data gap at RADARSAT‑2 end of life.

During 2015 and 2016, the IRS program has significantly contributed to the CSC-DA Data Warehouse. From its suite of optical EO satellites which operate in the visible, near IR and shortwave IR domain, data from the HR LISS-III and MR AWiFS sensors on board of Resourcesat-2 have been provided. Resourcesat-2 so far acquired cloud-free images of a vast majority of the first and second coverage of HR_IMAGE_2015 and several monthly MR coverages for MR_IMAGE_2015 over the EEA-39. The results regarding the above mentioned data sets will be discussed including an appraisal of the possible future role of upcoming IRS EO satellites for European data requirements.

Deimos Imaging (Spain) owns and operates the DEIMOS-2 satellite, a very-high resolution, agile satellite capable of providing 75-cm pan-sharpened, 1m Pan and 4-m multispectral (4 bands) imagery, with a 12km-wide swath. Launched in June 2014, the whole end-to-end DEIMOS -2 system has been designed to provide a cost-effective and highly responsive service to cope with the increasing need of fast access to very-high resolution imagery. Due to these features, DEIMOS-2 has become one of the key Copernicus Contributing Mission for the Copernicus Data Warehouse 2, being the only European satellite together with Pleiades capable of providing sub-metric multispectral imagery.
As a contribution to the VHR_IMAGE_2015 dataset defined within Copernicus Data Warehouse 2 for land local component applications over hotspots, DEIMOS -2 has been assigned with 17 large regions distributed over Scandinavia, Germany and United Kingdom. Those specific areas of interest have been defined based on land cover over riparian zones for the purpose of biodiversity monitoring, monitoring of coastal areas, risk areas, protected areas (Natura 2000 sites) and land parcel identification. Products from DEIMOS -2 will significantly contribute to these purposes with seamless cloud-free coverages over assigned areas.
This paper describes the contribution of DEIMOS-2 to the wall-to-wall VHR_IMAGE_2015 service, detailing the main results and operational achievements.