Rapid Eye imagery is being used by the MALAREO project to assist with malaria control programs in countries in southern Africa. While mosquitoes can obviously not be observed via satellite, their habitats, which are considered malaria risk areas, can be. The MALAREO project, funded by the European Commission under FP7, is a mixed European-African consortium which incorporates years of experience in malaria control with the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) EO capacity.

Astrium Services’ GEO-Information team has now taken satellite-based monitoring to a new level. Based on cutting- edge satellite imagery, standard and advanced image analysis, processing and interpretation, the new service Go Monitor provides high-quality change information for any area of interest worldwide on a reliable and cost-effective basis.

The US Defense Department intends to reduce planned purchases of commercial satellite imagery in 2013 as part of a broader initiative aimed at reducing US military expenditures by USD 259 billion over the next five years, according to the Pentagon planning document, Defense Budget Priorities and Choices.

Bhuvan, ISRO’s geoportal and gateway to Indian earth-observation data products and services, announced that now users can select, browse and query the thematic datasets from its website. Users can also use these thematic datasets and integrate them into their systems as OGC web services. At present, Land Use Land Cover (LULC) 50K : 2005-2006, datasets are available on the website. It can be accessed from the link provided at the Bhuvan home page (www.bhuvan.nrsc. gov.in) or accessed directly from http:// bhuvan-noeda.nrsc.gov.in/theme

National Remote Sensing Centre of India will set up a remote sensing ground station in the continent of Antarctica. Once the Antarctica ground station is operational, it will boost the remote sensing data transmitted by Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites. The data will be helpful during natural calamities like earthquakes, tsunamis and floods, besides providing regular data terrain. According to NRSC sources, the proposed ground station in Antarctica will receive data around 10 to 12 orbits per day from different IRS satellites.

A spy satellite for the Japanese government rode an H-2A rocket into orbit replenishing a fleet of secret spacecraft designed to keep track of missile development in North Korea. The secret satellite, built by Mitsubishi Electric Corp., is circling Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit with an altitude of more than 300 miles. The spacecraft was a more than $500 million payload outfitted with an optical camera and telescope to supply imagery to the Japanese government for intelligence, defense and civilian remote sensing applications. The spacecraft will become an operational member of Japan’s optical spy satellite fleet.

yandex buys 10 mn sq.km of images: Yandex, a Russian search engine, purchased high resolution images of 10 million sq.km of the Earth territory from ScanEx. The resolution shall be 0.8m per pixel.

1,145 satellites to be launched in next decade:
Euroconsult, a research and analyst firm specialising in the satellite and space sectors, forecasted that approximately 1,145 satellites will be built for launch during the next ten years (2011-2020), 51 percent more satellites than the previous decade. These projections came from Euroconsult’s just-released Satellites to be Built & Launched by 2020, World Market Survey.

The Government of Vietnam selected Belgian consortium which is led by SPACEBEL, a software engineering company operating in the Space and Earth monitoring applications sectors, for its second microsatellite for earth observations, ‘VNREDSAT-1B’. Vietnam will develop this microsatellite through its VNREDSAT (Vietnam Natural Resources Environment and Disaster monitoring small Satellite) programme. SPACEBEL is in charge of the mission and system studies, design and development of the entire satellite software package as well as the development and deployment of the ground segment.

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Software improves forests management
New software developed by the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Spain can generate maps of forest areas with information on timber volume, biomass or height of the trees, among other variables. The development of this software by the Group …