IMAGING

ISRO earns $100 million by launching 45 foreign satellites in space

According to Indian Science and Technology Minister, Mr. Singh, India has earned nearly 100 million USD (Rs 637.35 Crore) in revenue by launching 45 foreign satellites into space from 19 countries till date.

Mr. Singh provided the revenue details earned by Antrix – the commercial arm of ISRO – from launching foreign satellites into orbit. About SAARC satellite, “While the cost towards building and launching SAARC satellite will be met by the government of India, the cost towards ground system is expected to be sourced by respective SAARC countries. The objective of this project is to develop a satellite for the SAARC region that enables a full range of services to all our neighbours in the areas of telecommunications and broadcasting applications like television, DTH, teleeducation and disaster management,” he further elaborated. www.indiatimes.com

Malaysia to use RADARSAT-2 data

Global communications and information company, MDA, has been awarded three contracts by the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency (MRSA) to provide earth observation satellite RADARSAT- 2’s data to the agency. It would also set up a ground station to process the information and provide training to develop a variety of products.

EC, China to cooperate on RS research

Officials from the European Union and China have signed a new collaborative research arrangement in the area of remote sensing. The deal involves Europe’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Remote Sensing. The cooperation will be reinforced and extended to promising areas, such as air quality, human settlement detection and characterisation, land and soil mapping, land cover mapping, digital earth sciences and agricultural monitoring.

Teledyne awarded contract for Space-based Imagery

Teledyne Technologies subsidiary, Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc., has entered into an agreement, valued at $15 million over a multi-year period, with NASA for the provision of hyperspectral remote-sensing imagery from an instrument to be based on the International Space Station (ISS). The hyperspectral instrument, being built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), will be integrated by Teledyne onto the Multi- User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) earth-observation platform on the ISS. As the first instrument to be installed on the MUSES platform, the hyperspectral sensor is an advanced spectrometer, working in the wavelength range from visible through the near infrared, which is expected to be capable of acquiring more than 70 million square kilometers of data each year. The MUSES platform will host up to three other Earth-observing instruments at a time for additional commercial or government imaging applications. www.teledyne.com