IMAGING

Brazilian Space Agency and AWS sign statement of strategic intent

The Brazilian Space Agency and Amazon Web Services (AWS) signed a Statement of Strategic Intent and Cooperation. The initiative, on which the Brazilian Embassy in Washington also collaborated, is the first of its kind for AWS in Latin America, and will support innovation and the continued growth of the country’s space industry. The Brazilian Space Agency (known as the AEB, for the Agência Espacial Brasileira in Portuguese) plays an important role in the Latin American context, as it is responsible for a wide variety of space activities related to space transport, satellites, research, and applications.

The cooperation between the AEB and AWS outlines three specific areas of collaboration designed to support the AEB’s goals for long-term economic and technological development. These educational, economic, and political initiatives will benefit the Brazilian government, Brazilian commercial space organizations, and space-focused startups. https://aws.amazon.com

UP42 partnership with Near Space Labs

The UP42 geospatial developer platform is now offering very high-resolution, highfrequency imagery captured by balloons flying in the Earth’s stratosphere. The zeroemission “Swifty” balloon fleet is operated by Near Space Labs, based in New York and Barcelona, to acquire detailed imagery that is more environmentally friendly and more affordable than traditional aircraft and satellite data. In commercial operations to date, Near Space Labs’ imagery has been used to inform decision making by governments, energy utilities, insurance agencies, and conservation organizations. https://up42.com

Open Cosmos to launch Alisio-1 satellite for the Canary Islands

Space company Open Cosmos has been selected to design, manufacture and commission the Alisio-1 satellite. The ALISIO-1 project (Advanced Land-Imaging Satellite for Infrared Observations), financed with funds from the recovery and resilience mechanism of the European Union – NextGenerationEU, will be executed in 13 months, and includes the design, manufacture, testing and integration of a 6U+ satellite with S-band communications and laser.

The main payload, called DRAGO-2, has been fully developed by IACTECEspacio, and operates in the SWIR (Short Wave InfraRed) range between 1.0 and 1.7 μm. It is an improved version of its predecessor, DRAGO-1. Its data will allow measurements to be made in the short wave range both in the Canary Islands and in other parts of the world and will allow IACTEC-Espacio to deepen its research on the different applications of this sensor. www.open-cosmos.com

COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 mission

Falcon 9 launched the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 mission to low Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was the third launch and landing of this booster, which previously supported the launch of Arabsat-6A and STP-2. The Cosmo- SkyMed Second Generation program is funded by the Italian Space Agency, the Italian Ministry of Defense and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Scientific Research. The system consists of two satellites, which are designed to observe Earth using synthetic aperture radar (SAR). https://earth.esa.int

Planet is now a Carbon neutral company

Planet Labs PBC, a leading provider of daily data and insights about Earth, announced that as of December 2021, it is officially a carbon neutral company as part of its commitment to sustainability. Planet worked with SCS Global Services (SCS to certify its operations as carbon neutral in accordance with the internationally recognized PAS 2060: 2014 Carbon Neutrality Standard. This certification covers the entire supply chain – from manufacturing and launching their satellites to all aspects of its corporate operations – for the 2020 calendar year. www.planet.com

10-meter resolution forest monitoring platform by TerraPulse

TerraPulse, Inc., the green technology startup that introduced the world’s first high-resolution satellite map of global tree canopy cover in 2013, recently announced the company’s terraView land-monitoring platform. It will now host tree canopy, deforestation, and other forest-monitoring indices at 10-meter spatial resolution from 2017 to present, allowing detection and monitoring of forest change globally at the highest spatial and temporal resolution possible to date.

Applying terraPulse’s artificial intelligence (AI) to the European Space Agency’s publicly available global archive of satellite images, the technology allows measurement and monitoring of natural assets from the entire globe down to individual forest stands. https://terraplus.ca

RIEGL’S RIPROCESS 1.9 with RIUNITE

RIEGL’s project-oriented software for managing and processing RIEGLairborne, mobile and UAV-based data now makes use of the NEW RiUNITE software module. Based on a 64-bit architecture, large quantities of data can now be handled conveniently. Data processing is accelerated immensely by an improved file structure and reduced data handover. The results are given in less and smaller files.

1 hour of continuous scan data acquisition can now be processed within 1.5 hours on a state-of-the-art PC. The size of data for storage is reduced by 50-75%. Scan data adjustment can be done 3 times faster, colorization of georeferenced point clouds needs just 25% of the time that was needed before. The speed of exporting data is set to a new standard: The colorized point clouds can be exported as LAS 1.2 and 1.4 files 6x – 10x faster! www.riegl.com