Building space systems for operational Earth Observation
- Paper number
IAC-06-B1.2.04
- Author
Mr. Eric Maliet, EADS Astrium, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Herve Lambert, EADS Astrium, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Roland Cantié, EADS Astrium, France
- Year
2006
- Abstract
Institutional and commercial downstream applications based on Earth Observation satellites are increasing in terms of volume and diversity. They cover various domains, such as cartography, land cover, agriculture, natural and industrial risks management, humanitarian aid,… Existing and new applications are being consolidated, hence serving more and more users, and delivering major services such as civil security, Earth environment monitoring, integrated farming, or support to developing countries. This is a consequence of continuous efforts of major Earth Observation data operators and added value services companies, of the full exploitation of new missions as Spot 5, but also of the major forthcoming initiatives such as GMES for Europe or GEOSS on a worldwide scale. The major stake for sustainability of these applications consists now in ensuring the continuity and the required level of performances of the Earth observation satellite data sources: this means offering the users follow-on programmes for widely used missions such as Spot satellites, Envisat, ERS,… Within this scenery, GMES is the European answer for the institutional applications, in complement of national and third-party missions. For commercial applications, the trend is either towards solutions combining both institutional and commercial utilisations or towards dedicated solutions. In this last case the possession cost of the satellite capacity obviously has to be balanced by the market incomes. Whatever the type of applications, flexibility in terms of deployment capability becomes important: in particular, it is necessary for the commercial part to provide the Earth Observation satellite operators with a high level of flexibility in setting up their capacity and give them the possibility to align it on the market revenues. In this view, offering solutions which are scaleable in terms of missions and performances, and can be gradually deployed, will constitute a real progress. EADS Astrium, thanks to its institutional and export achievements has developed a range of satellite products and solutions enabling to propose scaleable EO satellites configurations, in terms of missions and operational performances. This covers products (e.g. new spacecraft generation Astrosat, new instrument) , new satellite and sensors technologies and solutions to serve better downstream users for institutional or export (e.g. Thailand, Algeria) applications.
- Abstract document