The Global Earth Observation System of Systems: Science Serving Society

Over the next decade, a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) will revolutionize our understanding of the Earth and how it works, producing societal benefits through more coordinated observations, better data management, increased data sharing and timely applications. The political momentum behind the establishment of GEOSS is described and examples of its benefits—drought prediction, disease monitoring, accuracy of weather and energy needs forecasting, disaster mitigation—are provided. While challenges exist, particularly in the area of making data accessible, steps are being taken to meet them, e.g. through the new GEO-Netcast concept. Interagency collaboration within countries is as important as international cooperation; the efforts of the US Group on Earth Observations in this regard are discussed. Maintaining the strong political support here and in all participating countries will be key to the success of GEOSS.     

Benefits and challenges of voluntary contribution to GEOSS

The vision of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is the achievement of societal benefits through voluntary contribution and sharing of data, metadata and products at no or minimum cost. Such undertakings, where contribution provides positive externalities, benefiting contributors and non-contributors alike, are often described as ‘social dilemmas’, usually resulting in small levels of voluntary contribution. We investigate the benefits and challenges of voluntary contribution to GEOSS, surveying economic and game theoretic literature and examining how the concepts of social dilemmas apply to the provision of GEOSS. We conduct an exploratory survey among individuals involved in the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) to understand their perception of voluntarily contribution. Even though contribution to GEOSS was perceived as rather low, e.g. because of a perceived lack of funds, commitment or organization, survey respondents also perceived many (exclusive) benefits of contribution, e.g. networking, visibility for their work or collaborating with motivated individuals. To increase participation, respondents suggested increasing financial support and raising awareness of GEOSS. We conclude that communicating the efficacy of individuals' contributions, the personal benefits of contribution and strengthening of group identity and knowledge about fellow participants' work can constitute incentives for future voluntary contribution. This could be facilitated by an externally established institution providing a framework for cooperation, or by institutions, agreements or frameworks agreed upon by contributors themselves.     

The Indian EO Programme-national and global drivers

The Indian Earth Observations Program, over the past three decades, has been mainly driven by the national need for natural resources management, environment monitoring and disaster support. With an array of seven Indian Earth Observation Satellites, national development support has been provided through a well-knit institutional framework of a National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS). A wide variety of applications have been developed as an inter-agency effort over the past 15 years. Now, the capacity of the programme has extended into the global arena and is providing operational data services to the global user community. Positioning of relevant policy guidelines for the EO program to contribute to national endeavor and its transitioning for global outreaching and development of a commercial enterprise — both at national and global levels has been an area of constant attention within ISRO.Issues related to defining the space and data acquisition as a national “public ground”, costing of data products and services and evolving a commercial Earth Observation policy have been addressed for providing the overall thrust of the Indian Earth Observations program. The paper discusses the evolution of the policy in the early stages and its transition today to support a two-pronged strategy of supporting national development support and at the same time, developing a commercial program. The paper also illustrates the success of these policy endeavors through specific cases of applications and development of value added services. The paper also brings out the potential policy adjustments that will be called for in the coming years.     

The biosphere 2 project and its potential role in assisting space exploration

Space Biospheres Ventures is developing technologies for its Biosphere 2 project — a 3 acre materially closed ecological system with human habitat, intensive agriculture and five wilderness biomes — and other life-support testbeds for space habitats in microgravity and the Moon and Mars, as well as for ecological research pertinent to the biosphere of Earth. These include soil bed reactors for air purification and biomass production; aquatic waste processing systems; real-time analytic systems; and computer systems of control and management. A space policy pursuing joint Earth and ‘space biospheres’ objectives and implications is discussed.     

Space commercialization and the law

This article examines the current legal status of commercial activities in space and describes the legislation — both national and international — existing for their regulation. The question of who is responsible for the action of non-governmental entities is thoroughly discussed, as is the notion of freedom of enterprise. Finally the author looks at the most commercialized areas of space activities — telecommunications and Earth observations — before drawing some conclusions on likely future trends in the privitization and regulation of space activities.     

A code of ethics for conducting business in outer space

The aim to increase commercial economic activity in space will be facilitated by the introduction of a code of ethics for the businesses involved, something that is now commonplace on Earth. A proposed such code—comprising 12 principles—is presented below. It covers areas such as environmental stewardship of space, the promotion of honest dealings, making safety an important concern, ensuring a free-market economy and disclosure of conflicts of interest or political contributions.     

Planetary Defense From Space: Part 2 (Simple) Asteroid Deflection Law

A system of two space bases housing missiles for an efficient Planetary Defense of the Earth from asteroids and comets was firstly proposed by this author in 2002. It was then shown that the five Lagrangian points of the Earth–Moon system lead naturally to only two unmistakable locations of these two space bases within the sphere of influence of the Earth. These locations are the two Lagrangian points L1 (in between the Earth and the Moon) and L3 (in the direction opposite to the Moon from the Earth). In fact, placing missiles based at L1 and L3 would enable the missiles to deflect the trajectory of incoming asteroids by hitting them orthogonally to their impact trajectory toward the Earth, thus maximizing the deflection at best. It was also shown that confocal conics are the only class of missile trajectories fulfilling this “best orthogonal deflection” requirement.The mathematical theory developed by the author in the years 2002–2004 was just the beginning of a more expanded research program about the Planetary Defense. In fact, while those papers developed the formal Keplerian theory of the Optimal Planetary Defense achievable from the Earth–Moon Lagrangian points L1 and L3, this paper is devoted to the proof of a simple “(small) asteroid deflection law” relating directly the following variables to each other:

(1) the speed of the arriving asteroid with respect to the Earth (known from the astrometric observations);

(2) the asteroid's size and density (also supposed to be known from astronomical observations of various types);

(3) the “security radius” of the Earth, that is, the minimal sphere around the Earth outside which we must force the asteroid to fly if we want to be safe on Earth. Typically, we assume the security radius to equal about 10,000 km from the Earth center, but this number might be changed by more refined analyses, especially in the case of “rubble pile” asteroids;

(4) the distance from the Earth of the two Lagrangian points L1 and L3 where the defense missiles are to be housed;

(5) the deflecting missile's data, namely its mass and especially its “extra-boost”, that is, the extra-energy by which the missile must hit the asteroid to achieve the requested minimal deflection outside the security radius around the Earth.

This discovery of the simple “asteroid deflection law” presented in this paper was possible because:

(1) In the vicinity of the Earth, the hyperbola of the arriving asteroid is nearly the same as its own asymptote, namely, the asteroid's hyperbola is very much like a straight line. We call this approximation the line/circle approximation. Although “rough” compared to the ordinary Keplerian theory, this approximation simplifies the mathematical problem to such an extent that two simple, final equations can be derived.

(2) The confocal missile trajectory, orthogonal to this straight line, ceases then to be an ellipse to become just a circle centered at the Earth. This fact also simplifies things greatly. Our results are thus to be regarded as a good engineering approximation, valid for a preliminary astronautical design of the missiles and bases at L1 and L3.

Still, many more sophisticated refinements would be needed for a complete Planetary Defense System:

(1) taking into account many perturbation forces of all kinds acting on both the asteroids and missiles shot from L1 and L3;

(2) adding more (non-optimal) trajectories of missiles shot from either the Lagrangian points L4 and L5 of the Earth–Moon system or from the surface of the Moon itself;

(3) encompassing the full range of missiles currently available to the USA (and possibly other countries) so as to really see “which missiles could divert which asteroids”, even just within the very simplified scheme proposed in this paper.

In summary: outlined for the first time in February 2002, our Confocal Planetary Defense concept is a simplified Keplerian Theory that already proved simple enough to catch the attention of scholars, popular writers, and representatives of the US Military. These developments would hopefully mark the beginning of a general mathematical vision for building an efficient Planetary Defense System in space and in the vicinity of the Earth, although not on the surface of the Earth itself!We must make a real progress beyond academic papers, Hollywood movies and secret military plans, before asteroids like 99942 Apophis get close enough to destroy us in 2029 or a little later.     

International coordination of space solar power related activities

Because the need for energy is global, and many energy networks are already interdependent, because no one country has sufficient technological capability or sufficient funds to provide a space solar powered solution on its own, and because any such solution will require international regulation, international coordination will be vital to any attempt to produce energy for Earth from space. This will be made easier by the fact that work on the subject has already been widely publicized and distributed and cooperative efforts have already been made. Various coordinating approaches are described and the need to forge partnerships between government, industry and academia — with greater involvement of all non-space groups concerned with energy — is emphasized. A “terracing approach” to the actual implementation of SPS is suggested and outlined.     

Legal consequences of a SETI detection

If a detection of ETI takes place, this will in all probability be the result of either: (a) detecting and recognising a signal or other emission of ETI; or (b) the finding of an alien artifact (for instance on the Moon or other Celestial Body of our Solar System); or (c) the highly improbable event of an actual encounter. First and foremost, legal consequences regarding any of these contingencies will result from immediate consultations between nations on Earth. Understandings, memoranda and even agreements might be proposed and/or concluded. Such results within the field of terrestrial law will surely be a new branch of International Law, and particularly of International Space Law. At the same time, terrestrial nations will have to realize that any ETI will be self-determined intelligent individualities or organizations who might have their own understanding of “rules of behaviour” and thus, be legal subjects. Whether one calls such rules “law” or not: if two intelligent races—both of which have specific rules of behaviour—come into contact with each other, the basic understanding of such mutual rules will lead to a kind of “code of conduct”. This might be the starting point for a kind of Law—Metalaw—between different races in the Universe.     

Lunar oxygen: Economic benefit for transportation systems and in situ production by fluorination

The use of oxygen produced on the Moon—called “MOONLOX”—is considered as a propellant component for a reusable Earth-Moon transportation system consisting of an aeroassisted orbital transfer vehicle and a lunar bus for lunar descent/ascent. Conditions for economic benefit are discussed and the processing concept of a lunar oxygen plant based on fluorination is presented. It is shown that the necessary mass of supply from Earth for MOONLOX-production is an important parameter, which may not be neglected due to its strong influence on the economy. In the ideal case where no supplies from Earth are required a reduction of up to 50% in masses to be launched into low Earth orbit can be obtained for a typical lunar mission with use of MOONLOX compared to a reference scenario with Earth-derived propellant. Mass-saving decreases, however, significantly with increasing supply from Earth until a critical supply-rate is reached—measured in percentage of MOONLOX-mass produced and consumed—beyond which mass-saving and thus economically promising lunar oxygen production is no longer possible. This critical supply-rate depends on the scenario for MOONLOX-utilization and is much larger in the case of in situ use of MOONLOX on the lunar surface, e.g. as ascent propellant for the lunar bus, than in the case of export for complete refuelling of both space vehicles. The latter scenario therefore requires significantly more autonomy for MOONLOX-production. The reduction of masses to be transported into low Earth orbit and corresponding MOONLOX-consumption define for given specific Earth-to-LEO transportation costs an upper limit on MOONLOX-production costs beyond which economic benefit is not possible. Depending on the MOONLOX-utilization strategy this upper limit varies between 3000 and 55000 $/kg for current Earth-to-LEO transportation costs.     

Future for CIS space industry

The following is the executive summary of Volume 1 of Euroconsult's four volume study, Space Industries and Markets in Russia and Other Countries of the Former Soviet Union. The material reproduced covers space policy and industry in CIS countries, providing a transversal view of CIS space activities and organizations. Generic problems across all fields of applications are analysed; the final focus is on trade with foreign countries. The other volumes cover prospects for satellite communications in the CIS to 2000; prospects for Earth observation satellite systems in Russia and Ukraine to 2000; and prospects for space transportation systems in the CIS to 2000. Information on the whole — some 650 pages — may be obtained from Pauline Byrne at Euroconsult, 71 Boulevard Richard Lenoir, 75011 Paris, France.     

Kazakhstan's space policy in a changing national and global context

In the wake of its transition to a market economy and the political and social reforms that have accompanied this, Kazakhstan—home to the renowned Baikonur space complex—is experiencing greater demand for space services. This article reports on the drivers behind and main features of the country's current space program and analyzes Kazakahstan's space policy. Key priorities are capacity building, maximizing revenue from the lease of Baikonur, international cooperation, in particular with Russia, as a means of gaining know-how and entering the world space industry, developing Earth observations and broadcasting expertise, and placing the country's activities within a legal framework.     

Strategic, technological and ethical aspects of establishing colonies on Moon and Mars

With the vast experience gained by Aerospace Community in the last five decades, the natural future course of action will be to expand Space Exploration. Our understanding of Moon is relatively better with a number of unmanned satellite missions carried out by the leading Space Agencies and manned missions to Moon by USA. Also a number of unmanned satellite missions and surface rover missions were carried out to Mars by those Space agencies generating many new details about Mars. While the future exploration efforts by global community will also be centered obviously on Moon and Mars, it is noteworthy that already NASA had declared its plans for establishing a Surface Base on Moon and developing the technical infrastructure required. Surface Bases on Moon and Mars give rise to a number of strategic, technical and ethical issues both in the process of development, and in the process of establishing the bases. The strategic issues related to Moon and Mars Surface Bases will be centered around development of enabling technologies, cost of the missions, and international cooperation. The obvious path for tackling both the technological development and cost issues will be through innovative and new means of international cooperation. International cooperation can take many forms like—all capable players joining a leader, or sharing of tasks at system level, or all players having their independent programmes with agreed common interfaces of the items being taken to and left on the surface of Moon/Mars. Each model has its own unique features. Among the technical issues, the first one is that of the Mission Objectives—why Surface Bases have to be developed and what will be the activity of crew on Surface Bases? Surface Bases have to meet mainly the issues on long term survivability of humans on the Mars/Moon with their specific atmosphere, gravity and surface characteristics. Moon offers excellent advantages for astronomy while posing difficulties with respect to solar power utilization and extreme temperature variations. Hence the technical challenges depend on a number of factors starting from mission requirements. Obviously the most important technical challenge to be addressed will be in the areas of crew safety, crew survivability, adequate provision to overcome contingencies, and in-situ resource utilization. Towards this, new innovations will be developed in areas such as specialized space suits, rovers, power and communication systems, and ascent and descent modules. The biggest ethical issue is whether humankind from Earth is targeting ‘habitation’ or ‘colonization’ of Moon/Mars. The next question will be whether the in-situ resource exploitation will be only for carrying out further missions to other planets from Moon/Mars or for utilization on Earth. The third ethical issue will be the long term impact of pollution on Moon/Mars due to technologies employed for power generation and other logistics on Surfaces. The paper elaborates the views of the authors on the strategic, technical and ethical aspects of establishing Surface Bases and colonies on Moon and Mars. The underlying assumptions and gray areas under each aspect will be explained with the resulting long-term implications.     

Bistatic radar as a tool for earth investigation using small satellites

Bistatic radar is a facility for the Earth remote sensing, which uses large spatial diversity between its transmitter and receiver. Nomogram method is proposed to determine the radar's parameters. Analysis of the nomograms has shown that modern onboard radio facilities allow to obtain spatial resolution of about 100 m at the wavelength λ = 3 cm for LEO satellite (H = 350 km). Experiments of bistatic radiolocation of the Earth near the radioshadow zone were provided using telecommunication link “MIR” orbital station — GEO satellite at wavelength λ = 32 cm. For the first time in practice of bistatic radiolocation of the Earth from space reflected signal in radioshadow zone was observed.The analysis of experimental results verified the developed radiophysical model with the value of sea water conductivity σ = 7.0 mo/m and absorption coefficient due to atmospheric oxygen χ = 0.0096±0.0024 dB/km.     

25 YEARS OF SPACE AT SURREY—PIONEERING MODERN MICROSATELLITES

Space at Surrey has developed over 25 years from very modest beginnings in 1974 to an international space centre by 1998. It has pioneered small satellites and succeeded in launching 14 low cost but sophisticated microsatellites over the course of two decades. In the 1990s, small satellites have become fashionable—but this was not always so! This paper describes the 25 years history of “Space at Surrey”.     

Potential climatic impact of organic haze on early Earth

We have explored the direct and indirect radiative effects on climate of organic particles likely to have been present on early Earth by measuring their hygroscopicity and cloud nucleating ability. The early Earth analog aerosol particles were generated via ultraviolet photolysis of an early Earth analog gas mixture, which was designed to mimic possible atmospheric conditions before the rise of oxygen. An analog aerosol for the present-day atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan was tested for comparison. We exposed the early Earth aerosol to a range of relative humidities (RHs). Water uptake onto the aerosol was observed to occur over the entire RH range tested (RH=80-87%). To translate our measurements of hygroscopicity over a specific range of RHs into their water uptake ability at any RH < 100% and into their ability to act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) at RH > 100%, we relied on the hygroscopicity parameter κ, developed by Petters and Kreidenweis. We retrieved κ=0.22?±0.12 for the early Earth aerosol, which indicates that the humidified aerosol (RH < 100 %) could have contributed to a larger antigreenhouse effect on the early Earth atmosphere than previously modeled with dry aerosol. Such effects would have been of significance in regions where the humidity was larger than 50%, because such high humidities are needed for significant amounts of water to be on the aerosol. Additionally, Earth organic aerosol particles could have activated into CCN at reasonable-and even low-water-vapor supersaturations (RH > 100%). In regions where the haze was dominant, it is expected that low particle concentrations, once activated into cloud droplets, would have created short-lived, optically thin clouds. Such clouds, if predominant on early Earth, would have had a lower albedo than clouds today, thereby warming the planet relative to current-day clouds.     

Orbiting spies—opportunities and challenges

The great improvement in civil observation satellite capabilities over the past two decades—such that the image quality of civil and military satellites is now converging—is demonstrated with the aid of illustrations. The advantages of such progress, eg. new tools for treaty verification, are discussed. Potential problems, including censorship and denial of access to images of one's own country, which may conflict with the UN Remote Sensing Principles, are also highlighted. It is suggested that work on an ASAT treaty should be made a priority for the future.     

Statistical Relationships between Solar,Interplanetary, and Geomagnetic Disturbances, 1976–2000: 3

In this paper we continue the analysis of the influence of solar and interplanetary events on magnetic storms of the Earth that was started in [9, 10]. Different experimental results on solar-terrestrial physics are analyzed in the study and the effects are determined that arise due to differences in the methods used to analyze the data. The classifications of magnetic storms by the K _p and D _st indices, the solar flare classifications by optical and X-ray observations, and the classifications of different geoeffective interplanetary events are compared and discussed. It is demonstrated that quantitative estimations of the relationships between two types of events often depend on the direction in which the events are compared. In particular, it was demonstrated that the geoeffectiveness of halo CMEs (that is, the percentage of Earth-directed coronal mass ejections that result in geomagnetic storms) is 40–50%. Higher values given in some papers were obtained by another method, in which they were defined as the probability of finding candidates for a source of geomagnetic storms among CMEs, and, strictly speaking, these values are not true estimates of the geoeffectiveness. The latter results are also in contrast with the results of the two-stage tracing of the events: first a storm—an interplanetary disturbance, and then an interplanetary disturbance—a CME.     

Why we need a space elevator

The goals of and vision for development of a space elevator have been discussed repeatedly. However, why we should develop one has been glossed over. This paper will focus upon the major issue—why build a space elevator infrastructure? It considers why we need a space elevator, what missions it would enable and how far it would reduce costs. There is no doubt that some major missions would be enhanced or significantly enabled by a space elevator infrastructure. Global communications, energy, monitoring of the Earth, global/national security, planetary defense, and exploration beyond low-Earth orbit are a few examples. In the end, if we are serious about extending space development and avoiding limitations on the human spirit, the reason we should build a space elevator is because we must!     

Parametric study of the diversion of a near Earth object on an Earth intersecting trajectory

To date, NASA's “Near Earth Object Program” has discovered over 5500 comets and asteroids on trajectories that bring them within “the neighborhood” of Earth's orbit. Nearly 1000 of these objects are classified as “potentially hazardous,” passing within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth's orbit. Discovery rates of such threatening bodies increase each year. Given this multitude of threats, in addition to evidence that the planet has absorbed many impacts over its history, it is reasonable to assume that another object will strike the Earth at some point in the future. Consequently, researchers have studied and proposed several mitigation techniques for such an occurrence. This study seeks to determine how effectively the attachment of a tether and ballast mass would divert the trajectory of such threatening objects. Specifically, the study analyzes the effects over time of such a system on objects of varying orbital semimajor axis and eccentricity, using various tether lengths and ballast masses. It was determined that the technique is most effective for NEOs with high eccentricity and small semimajor axis, and that system performance increases as tether length and ballast mass increase.