IMAGING

Sentinel-1B on its way to complete Europes “RadarVision”

Airbus Defence and Space built C-Band radars will monitor the environment Earth Observation satellite Sentinel-1B, built by Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor and carrying an Airbus Defence and Space built radar instrument , is on its way to complete the Copernicus radar constellation. Once activated, it will operate jointly with its twin, Sentinel-1A (launched in April 2014) and form the Sentinel-1 polar orbiting constellation, which will significantly improve revisit and response times to provide continuous all-weather round the clock imagery for marine, land monitoring and emergency services. www.airbusdefenceandspace.com

MicroCarb to map CO2 levels

CNES, the French Space Agency, has awarded Airbus Defence and Space, a contract to design and build the optical instrument for MicroCarb, a microsatellite to map global carbon dioxide levels. After launch in 2020, the satellite will study carbon dioxide sources (which produce CO2) and sinks (which absorb it) to understand how this greenhouse gas is affecting climate change. MicroCarb will be the first European mission dedicated solely to measuring CO2 levels using a spectrometer scanning at visible and near infra-red wavelengths.

Brock Gold Medal for Prof. Wolfgang Förstner

The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) has announced that Prof. Wolfgang Förstner of Bonn University, Germany, will be presented with the 2016 Brock Gold Medal Award for his outstanding scientific achievements in the fields of photogrammetry and computer vision. Professor Förstner is an internationally leading expert in photogrammetry, computer vision, pattern recognition and machine learning. Throughout his exemplary career of nearly 40 years as a researcher, inventor, innovator and educator, he has made exceptionally significant scientific contributions in many areas of Information from Imagery and mentored generations of mapping scientists and engineers. Examples of his work include blunder detection for aerial triangulation, image matching, object recognition and statistical projective geometry.

MDS univ. to carry out digital mapping

The Ministry of Human Resource Development has chosen the department of remote sensing, Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati University in Ajmer to carry out a detailed digital mapping of two cities— Jodhpur and Kota recently. The department of remote sensing established in 2002 is the only one in the state running UG and PG programmes. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Philippines deploys DIWATA-1

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Tohoku University, Hokkaido University, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) of the Republic of the Philippines, and the University of the Philippines Diliman have successfully deployed DIWATA-1 satellite in the space – first microsatellite of Philippines. JAXA also deployed a 50 kg-class microsatellite from the ISS Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo”. This was also the first success for JAXA to deploy a 50 kg-class microsatellite from the ISS Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo”.

DigitalGlobe delivers first phase of continent-scale mapping for PSMA

DigitalGlobe has completed the first phase of a continent-scale mapping initiative that will enable Geoscape, a new information product from PSMA Australia, to support Australia’s digital economy. Under the second phase, DigitalGlobe will leverage a range of geospatial technologies to map the locations and characterize the physical attributes of more than 15 million structures spread across the entire continent of Australia. When completed, Geoscape will provide a comprehensive view into the location, distribution, and characteristics of structures around the entire continent with unprecedented fidelity. DigitalGlobe.com