Artist’s rendition of a satellite – paulfleet/123RF Stock
Looking at the latest Earth Observation (EO) satellite launch, some first light hyperspectral imagery and a research publication showing the challenges of getting widespread use of EO data.
Satellite Launch
24th February saw the successful launch of the Egyptian Earth Observation (EO) satellite, Horus-1, by the Long March 2C (Chang Zheng 2C) rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
There is limited information available on the satellite, which is believed to be a strategic collaboration between Egyptian Space Agency and China, and was developed by Aerospace Dongfanghong Satellite Co., Ltd. of the China Association of Science and technology (CAST). It is indicated the development is part of the Chinese One Belt One Road Initiative to develop infrastructure and trade links throughout Asia, Europe, Africa, and other regions.
The satellite went into a sun-synchronous orbit, and is understood to have a high-resolution imaging camera on board, and is expected to be the first of a series of Egyptian EO satellites. The data from the satellite will be used for applications such as sustainable development, water resource monitoring, natural disaster support, monitoring illegal activities, and by Egypt’s agricultural sector to improve productivity and limit wastage.
First Light Imagery
Indian company, Pixxel, released the first set of images from its hyperspectral pathfinder satellites on Monday. The released images can be seen here and show India’s Krishna River Delta, Dubai’s Palm Islands, Australia’s Super pit and Granny Smith Gold Mine and Senegal’s Saloum River Delta.
The Shakuntala satellite, also known as Pixxel-TD 2 was launched on the SpaceX rideshare mission on 1st April 2022, and the imager on board has over 150 spatial bands covering the visible and infra-red spectrums together with a spatial resolution of 10m per pixel. This is one of the highest spatial resolution commercially available hyperspectral datasets. The data from the satellite will be used for applications such as land use and land change monitoring, deforestation, crop health, climate change and mineral exploration.
Pixxel aim to launch a constellation of 24 satellites over the next two years, which it hopes will give them global daily hyperspectral coverage.
Using Satellite Data For Monitoring Tropical Forests
According to a paper published in Environmental Research Letters, governments are not making the best use of EO data to report key environmental data about tropical forests to the United Nations (UN). As part of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, governments should report on the level of carbon emitted or removed in forested areas, termed carbon-flux budgets, as part of the UN’s Global Stocktake.
The paper entitled Satellite-based global maps are rarely used in forest reference levels submitted to the UNFCCC by Melo and Baker et al., looked at the different global forest datasets freely available from space agencies around the world and various measurement algorithms developed by scientists to make this process as easy as possible
Of the fifty-six nations that submitted data to the UN from 2014 to 2022 about tropical forests, only 46% of countries used them: that ranged from 25% of Latin American and Caribbean countries to 65% of African states. Even those countries that did use EO data, almost all of these relied on a single product, global forest change, to produce their submissions. The researchers found that some countries used the product in innovative ways combining it with local data. However, the lack of diversity of EO products used is surprising and disappointing. The researchers highlighted a number of factors for the low usage including:
- Complex UN rules around how the global maps should be used and the data reported.
- Individual nations finding it difficult to apply one-fit-all maps to their national circumstances.
- Lack of co-operation between experts who develop products based on satellite imagery and the users of those products who can find them overly complicated and confusing.
The final reason highlighted by the researchers is something we frequently see in the industry. Our own Dr. Samantha Lavender highlighted this issue in her presentation at the Today’s Innovation / Tomorrow’s Technology and Future Directions session at last week’s Open Geospatial Consortium Member Meeting in Friscati, Italy. Dr Lavender reflected on “the importance of customer perceptions and expectations”, and noted that the goal is to have people use data without knowing that they are using data derived from satellite sources.
Conclusion
While launching ever more EO satellites into orbit creates vast new resources of satellite data, if this data cannot be made into products and services that are easy to use for non-specialist people then the uptake of satellite data will always be lower than it could be and this amazing resource will be wasted.
