SEOSAT-Ingenio’s lost promise for Earth observation
Arianespace, a French launch service provider, and the European Space Agency (ESA) say they will set up an independent enquiry after a Vega rocket, VV17, failed after lifting off from its launch site at Kourou in French Guiana during the night of November 16 to 17.
The rocket was carrying two satellites: Spain’s SEOSATO-Ingenio for ESA and TARANIS for the French space agency, CNES.
ESA says the first three stages “functioned nominally [sic]” until about eight minutes after departure from the launch pad. “At that time, a degraded trajectory was detected, followed by a loss of control of the vehicle and the subsequent loss of the mission.”
Initial investigations suggest there was a problem with the fourth-stage of the rocket. The launcher fell in a completely uninhabited area, according to an ESA press release.
Tough year already
It’s been a tough year for space, as it has been for us all on Earth. The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed engineering developments and pushed back launch dates. But it hasn’t stopped some of the biggest and most ambitious missions to date — notably, three international missions to Mars.
There have been countless, smaller satellite launches as well.
And Spain’s high-resolution land imaging mission called SEOSAT-Ingenio (Spanish Earth Observation Satellite — Ingenuity) was to be a highlight for European science and technology.
Prior to its scheduled launch on November 17, DW presented what SEOSAT-Ingenio would do in an article originally published on November 13. That article follows:
The last phases of a mission of this size are “very intense,” says Alex Popescu, SEOSAT project manager. It’s all about the final stages of what’s known as “integration and test” before the launch. Usually, teams work together, all in the same location, but the pandemic has changed that.
“The pandemic has blocked all the usual procedures, so we had to quickly put in place new ways for remote access and remote working. And it’s been difficult, but impressive to see how well it has worked,” Popescu says.
Two small teams were at Kourou in French Guiana, Europe’s main launch location, when DW spoke to Popescu, who was there as well. But everyone else, from the launch support team to those working on the satellite’s early phases in orbit, they were dotted around Europe.
“We’re basically working in remote,” says Popescu. “It’s very different from what would normally happen.”
Spain in high-resolution
The “jewel” of SEOSAT is its dual camera, says Popescu.
The SEOSAT-Ingenio spacecraft is enclose in its fairing, ready for launch
It will deliver optical images of Earth in black and white — otherwise known as the panchromatic band — at a high-resolution of 2.5 meters (8 feet).
And color images in four multispectral bands — red, blue, green, and near-infrared — at a resolution of 10 meters.
SEOSAT’s focus is very much Spain, but it will also observe North Africa and South America.
Its high-resolution images will be “ideal,” says Popescu, for applications in urban development, cartography and environmental monitoring of water and land use, woodland cover, agriculture and tackling climate change and natural disasters, such as wildfires and floods — and the data will be open to both public and commercial use.
“Space missions offer a global view,” says Popsecu, “you are not confined to a local area, and everything is linked. So, first, by looking at North Africa and South America, which has historical and economic ties to Spain, it will benefit co-operations between countries. But, also, by monitoring neighborhoods closer and further away, you can better understand how changes in one area can affect changes at home or in other areas. And that will be of big value.”
Tricks up SEOSAT’s sleeve
Panchromatic images are useful for mapping and monitoring urban land usage. They let you see building activity, like structures and new roads, and for that a higher resolution helps.
Color images, meanwhile, are useful for monitoring vegetation, its health or degradation, water quality, and minerals and other resources. And because it’s felt that such details seldom change very quickly, “you do not need submeter accuracy,” says Popescu.
SEOSAT-Ingenio’s “state-of-the-art” camera can deliver images of Earth at a resolution of 2.5 meters
By superimposing the higher resolution, black and white images, onto the color images, “you gain in spatial resolution,” says Popescu. “You get additional detail from the panchromatic images into the color.”
SEOSAT can also look sideways and capture images of every corner of the world every three days.
“The satellite will remain in a fixed orbit, but it can roll to the left or right like a swimmer in the water,” says Popescu, “and if you roll 45 degrees at an altitude of 670 kilometers [416 miles], you will see an area stretching 670 km.”
That could be useful for avoiding areas covered by clouds, for instance, or during emergencies when satellite programs collaborate to deliver as many images, as frequently as possible, from the affected area. So, it wouldn’t matter whether SEOSAT was directly over the emergency zone if what it delivers gets stitched together with other images to provide a bigger picture of Earth.
Adding value to existing Earth observation satellites
It all sounds very impressive on paper or, indeed, read off a screen. But fleets of Earth Observation satellites, including Europe’s own Copernicus program and its family of Sentinel satellites, 1 through 5, already offer similar land imaging capabilities. And Sentinel-6 is due for launch now as well.
“The added value is unclear, and I’d question why Spanish authorities need this capability,” says Malcolm Macdonald, a professor of satellite engineering at Strathclyde University and host of the podcast, Nibbles in Space.
“The multispectral capability seems very similar to the two Sentinel-2 spacecraft, and so many others. But if the images are well calibrated and characterized, then it could well be possible to combine the [SEOSAT] images with Sentinel-2 images and gain some added value, for example, in better temporal resolution — although, it’s kind of in the wrong orbit for that, so any added value could be intermittent.”
It’s also “curious,” says Macdonald, “that the SEOSAT bands don’t align that well with Sentinel-2.” Some do and some don’t, he says, and this may simply mean they are looking for different things, but it could mean that “if you had images from roughly the same time, you might be able to difference the response on the overlapping bands to retrieve the response in the part of the spectrum where they don’t overlap.”
Europe big on Earth observation
The Copernicus program is already one of the biggest of its kind.
Even so, Josef Aschbacher, director of Earth Observation Programs at ESA, has said SEOSAT-Ingenio “fit[s] perfectly into the European landscape of satellite missions. It is a commercial enterprise as much as a societal enterprise,” and therefore “fills an important market segment.”
It will also serve as a source of national pride at a time of when Spain has been hit so hard by the pandemic. It’s a Spanish mission, funded by Spain’s Center for Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), it was conceived and designed in Spain by Spanish engineers, and its main instrument, that camera, was made my Spanish company, Sener — their first attempt at such high-precision optics, says Popescu.
The SEOSAT-Ingenio spacecraft in a so-called cleanroom at Airbus in Spain
Other technology came from European partners — French engineering supplied the camera’s mirrors, with filters from Germany and detectors from the UK. The satellite itself was done by Airbus Spain.
But this mission shows Spain can do it.
“It’s been a big challenge for Spanish industry and it’s remarkable how [everyone] came together and, basically, without much relevant experience, managed to develop and build this satellite,” says Popscu. “After all these years, I really must give credit to all the engineers across Europe, who made this achievement possible.”
SEOSAT is part of the Spanish Earth Observation Program (PNOTS), which features a complementary satellite called PAZ.
PAZ is an X-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) spacecraft, which despite its name, meaning “peace,” serves security and defense interests.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
From the French Riviera
It may be among the strangest places on Earth, but this is where a lot of the European Union’s Sentinel satellite equipment is being built for the Copernicus Earth Observation program. In Cannes, Thales Alenia Space is responsible for the Sentinel-1 satellites and a few of the others, too. The contractors include Airbus and many more. Sentinel-1B launches this week, making the first mission whole.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
The story so far
Sentinel-1A was the first to launch on April 3, 2014. Since then, two have followed – Sentinel-2A on June 23, 2015 and Sentinel-3A on February 16, 2016. This shot from Sentinel-3A is one of its earliest. It shows the River Nile and Delta and parts of the Middle East. Using a sea and land surface temperature radiometer (SLSTR), the satellite measures the energy radiating from Earth’s surface.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
In spectacular true color
This incredibly sharp image shows Red Sea coral reefs off the coast of Saudi Arabia. It was captured by Sentinel-2A on June 28, 2015. The quality of the Sentinel images is a vast improvement on previous satellite missions, such as Envisat. The Sentinel-2 mission is for land monitoring. It provides images of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
In spectacular false color
This false color image of south Khartoum in Sudan was one of the first from Sentinel-2A, captured five days after it arrived in orbit. In the top right corner you can see a bit of the Blue Nile River. The scattered red blotches along the river banks indicate dense vegetation, which is one of the things the satellite monitors. It’s a false color image, as color was added to aid interpretation.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
Harbor under threat
This is another great shot from Sentinel-2A, showing Sierra Leone in West Africa. The country’s capital, Freetown, is on the peninsula at the bottom of the image. Its economy depends on the natural deep water harbor. But ESA says the estuary is “threatened by a growing population [and] unauthorized housing development,” which has caused the removal of many hectares of mangrove vegetation.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
The ‘Yuma checkerboard’
Many of the Sentinel images are like works of art. You don’t really have to know what’s going on to appreciate them. But scientists, policymakers and authorities charged with national security rely on satellite imagery. And given the tools and skills, normal folk can benefit too. The Copernicus program is driven by a principle of Open Data. This shows Yuma in southwestern Arizona.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
Tracking change in the Aral Sea
This is the Aral Sea as captured by Sentinel-1A. It’s a composite of three radar scans taken between 2014 and 2015. ESA says the Aral Sea is a “striking example of humankind’s impact on the environment and natural resources. […] It has lost around 90 percent of its water volume since 1960 because of Soviet-era irrigation schemes.” The different colors show the changes between the scans.
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The amazing things Sentinel satellites see
Meanwhile, Back in Berlin…
Captured by Sentinel-2A, this image shows a vibrant Berlin, the German capital, in exquisite detail. It shows how green the city is, with the Tegeler See and Wannsee on the western side. There’s also the former airport, the Tempelhofer Feld, in the lower center of the image, which in summer blooms with people, kites and bikes. All these images can be seen in full: www.esa.int/spaceimages/Images
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/seosat-ingenio-s-lost-promise-for-earth-observation/a-55592639?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf