This week has seen two launches from some of the workhorses of the satellite industry, namely one of China’s Long March rockets and Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket; however, the outcomes of the launches were very different, demonstrating how difficult the … Continue reading
This week has seen the release of the first publicly available batches of Earth Observation (EO) data from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, and a commercial rocket from China launching 9 satellites including several EO payloads. NISAR Data … Continue reading
Tuesday 7th July saw the latest SpaceX rideshare mission, Transporter-17, take off when a Falcon 9 rocket took over 80 satellite payloads into orbit from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. As usual with these rideshare missions, there were several Earth … Continue reading
Highlighting two contrasting approaches to satellite sovereignty within the Earth Observation (EO) sector this week, starting with news on the demise of Sentinel-1A and then moving onto interesting reports from Russia. Sentinel-1A Following last week’s blog about the contract for … Continue reading
One of the key benefits of Earth Observation (EO) is the principle of data continuity – this is having uninterrupted, consistent, long-term datasets available over large areas. This is critical for a variety of reasons, such as understanding what is … Continue reading
Last week was spent surrounded by the dreaming spires of Oxford, at the EarthCARE Science and Validation workshop. The EarthCARE (Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer) satellite, nicknamed HakuryÅ« (Japanese for “white dragon”), is an amazing European Space Agency/Japanese Space … Continue reading
This week is all about Asia, as we’re highlighting the first light images of a Taiwanese satellite, plus the latest Chinese launches, and a test flight of a high-altitude platform balloon in India. Taiwan Taiwan has confirmed that its first … Continue reading
On Sunday, 3rd May, SpaceX launched its latest rideshare mission, from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on a Falcon 9 rocket that was carrying 45 satellites on board. As usual with these rideshare missions, there were several Earth … Continue reading
This week we’re looking at the different ways China is increasing influence over the Earth Observation (EO), and wider space sector, across the globe; including supporting satellite launches, helping develop other countries capacity and capability, and new approaches to using … Continue reading
This week we’re highlighting some recent satellite launches, the first of which is the launch by China of a climate satellite monitoring greenhouse gases; and secondly recent Portuguese launches that have literary connections. China Launch On Friday 17th April, China … Continue reading
