Towards a new remote sensing order?

This Viewpoint argues that the 1986 UN Principles on Remote Sensing have failed to anticipate the growth and broadening of the Earth observation field and are now less relevant. It traces the development of remote sensing: from a narrow government-controlled base, three distinct sectors of military, civil (i.e. public) and commercial Earth observation can now be distinguished and the latter is making images ever more widely and easily available. There has been no international effort to adjust the international legal regime to this changing environment and even the USA's remote sensing policy has basically been reactive. It is impossible now to conceive an overarching remote sensing policy and the challenge will be to shape each sectoral regime appropriately.     

The benefits of remote sensing for energy policy

A strong remote sensing regime is a necessary component of any contemporary national or international energy policy. Energy is essential to the functioning of modern industrial society, and as such it is the responsibility of governments to produce sound national energy policies in order to ensure stable economic growth, ecologically responsible use of energy resources and the health and safety of citizens. Comprehensive, accurate and timely remote sensing data can aid decision making on energy matters in several areas. This paper looks at the benefits that can be realized in resource exploration, weather forecasting and environmental monitoring. Improvements in the technology of remote sensing platforms would be of great value to buyers of energy, sellers of energy and the environment. Furthermore, the utility of such information could be enhanced by efforts of government agencies to communicate it more effectively to the end-user. National energy policies should thus include investments not only in satellite system hardware to collect data, but also in the services required to interpret and distribute the data.     

Expanding global access to civilian and commercial remote sensing data: implications and policy issues

Current and planned developments in the field of civilian and commercial satellite imagery promise a major expansion in international accessibility to remote sensing data and technologies. This paper addresses the implications of the expanding global access to land remote sensing data and their derived products. While atmospheric, meteorological, and oceanographic data is also widely available at cost or free of charge, it is land remote sensing - specifically the unique systems with high-resolution and frequent revisit times - that are of primary concern for international and regional security issues. Military and intelligence satellites are not addressed in this discussion of expansion due to their inherently controlled access, unless such systems also provide commercially available imagery or products (as is the case with some Russian systems).     

The market of remote sensing data: A developing business

The past ten years have demonstrated the valuable contribution of space remote sensing to the management of natural resources. A second generation of observation satellites has been set up with Landsat D and SPOT to support operational applications all over the world. Such satellites have been established in light of economic pay-offs that should be illustrated hereafter.     

An optimal microsatellite system for optical remote sensing data management

Inter-Satellite Link represents an innovative aspect in remote sensing missions, allowing the exchange of data between satellites of a constellation according to appropriate algorithms for the minimization of the delivery time of requested data. In a recent study, the feasibility of gaining a long period of Inter-Satellite Link with an acceptable level of Bit Error Rate has been demonstrated by using a Walker Constellation composed of 20 micro-satellites located on Sun-Synchronous Orbits. In this paper, an investigation into the performance of such a constellation through the implementation of an optimal process of target access and data exchange among satellites has been carried out, together with a sizing of the onboard telecommunication system. A process analysis has been executed through the modelling of weighted fitting functions, specific for an optical remote sensing system.     

The promise and problems of the land remote sensing policy act of 1992

After nearly a decade of attempting to guide the complex process of land remote sensing in the US, the 1984 Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act was repealed. In its place, Congress passed the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992. This action was prompted by what many observers consider a failed attempt at commercialization and the inability of the old law's provisions to meet the compelling needs of scientific research. The new law attempts to address these failures and, in many respects, is successful. Nonetheless it still embodies some of the problems associated with the earlier law. This article compares the provisions of the two laws and provides an analysis of the new law's strengths and weaknesses.     

Taiwan's second remote sensing satellite

FORMOSAT-2 is Taiwan's first remote sensing satellite (RSS). It was launched on 20 May 2004 with five-year mission life and a very unique mission orbit at 891 km altitude. This orbit gives FORMOSAT-2 the daily revisit feature and the capability of imaging the Arctic and Antarctic regions due to the high enough altitude. For more than three years, FORMOSAT-2 has performed outstanding jobs and its global effectiveness is evidenced in many fields such as public education in Taiwan, Earth science and ecological niche research, preservation of the world heritages, contribution to the International Charter: space and major disasters, observation of suspected North Korea and Iranian nuclear facilities, and scientific observation of the atmospheric transient luminous events (TLEs). In order to continue the provision of earth observation images from space, the National Space Organization (NSPO) of Taiwan started to work on the second RSS from 2005. This second RSS will also be Taiwan's first indigenous satellite. Both the bus platform and remote sensing instrument (RSI) shall be designed and manufactured by NSPO and the Instrument Technology Research Center (ITRC) under the supervision of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL). Its onboard computer (OBC) shall use Taiwan's indigenous LEON-3 central processing unit (CPU). In order to achieve cost effective design, the commercial off the shelf (COTS) components shall be widely used. NSPO shall impose the up-screening/qualification and validation/verification processes to ensure their normal functions for proper operations in the severe space environments.     

Security implications of remote sensing

Major technical advances in remote sensing have developed sophisticated systems with both extensive military and civilian applications. Not only the USA and USSR, but a growing number of other countries such as China, France, India and Japan are actively engaged in remote-sensing R&D. This article reviews the capabilities of civilian satellite technologies and programmes of various nations, and examines the implications for national and international security. Many states are concerned about the commercial availability of data on their economic resources and national security-related activities. A particular problem is the possible misinterpretation of remotely-sensed data.     

Multispectral remote sensing of aerosols

Aerosols are common atmospheric constituents that occur both naturally (clouds, sea spray, dust, smoke, and volcanic emissions) and artificially (smog, smoke, certain hazes, detonation products, and industrial emissions). Some, like the great dust bowl storms in the U.S. in the 1930s, are a combination of natural and manmade agents. Most aerosols are difficult to model because they are composed of small, non-spherical particles whose optical constants and particle sizes are poorly known. Spectroscopic observations of aerosols in the thermal infrared atmospheric window between 8 and 13.5 μm offer the opportunity to detect aerosols both day and night down to very low column densities. Such observations can also identify the gross chemical composition of the particles and, in some cases, the actual sizes and shapes. In this paper, we discuss thermal i.r. observations of three types of aerosols: satellite measurements of volcanic dust, ground-based observations of airborne desert soil and both ground- and space-based measurements of cirrus clouds.     

Taiwan's second remote sensing satellite

FORMOSAT-2 is Taiwan's first remote sensing satellite (RSS). It was launched on 20 May 2004 with five-year mission life and a very unique mission orbit at 891 km altitude. This orbit gives FORMOSAT-2 the daily revisit feature and the capability of imaging the Arctic and Antarctic regions due to the high enough altitude. For more than three years, FORMOSAT-2 has performed outstanding jobs and its global effectiveness is evidenced in many fields such as public education in Taiwan, Earth science and ecological niche research, preservation of the world heritages, contribution to the International Charter: space and major disasters, observation of suspected North Korea and Iranian nuclear facilities, and scientific observation of the atmospheric transient luminous events (TLEs). In order to continue the provision of earth observation images from space, the National Space Organization (NSPO) of Taiwan started to work on the second RSS from 2005. This second RSS will also be Taiwan's first indigenous satellite. Both the bus platform and remote sensing instrument (RSI) shall be designed and manufactured by NSPO and the Instrument Technology Research Center (ITRC) under the supervision of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL). Its onboard computer (OBC) shall use Taiwan's indigenous LEON-3 central processing unit (CPU). In order to achieve cost effective design, the commercial off the shelf (COTS) components shall be widely used. NSPO shall impose the up-screening/qualification and validation/verification processes to ensure their normal functions for proper operations in the severe space environments.     

Current policy issues in remote sensing: report by the International Policy Advisory Committee of ISPRS

The role of remote sensing in promoting sustainable development, its general benefits and easing access to remotely sensed images, especially for developing countries, have all been examined by the International Policy Advisory Committee of the ISPRS in 2003. This report, a slightly revised version of an article that appears in the September 2003 issue of the ISPRS's Highlights magazine, presents the committee's findings and recommendations.     

Strategic plan for civilian remote sensing

The following is a brief to the US Congress of a report prepared by the Office of Technology Assessment, The Future of Remote Sensing from Space: Civilian Satellite Systems and Applications. The report argues that a flexible, long-term interagency plan is needed to maximize the return on US investment in remote sensing. This in turn will require funding to ensure continuity of data collection and use, and suggests the need to form a broad-based international cooperative programme to avoid redundancy and promote more effective application of data.     

The IRS-P3 remote sensing mission

ISRO has developed the PSLV rocket (Polar Spacecraft Launch Vehicle) for polar orbiting satellites up to 1000 kg and is conducting a series of test missions. One of this is the IRS-P3, an remote sensing satellite with German participation. The payload consists of 3 scientific instruments: The wide field sensor WiFS for vegetation monitoring (ISRO), the imaging spectrometer MOS (DLR/Germany) for coastal zone and ocean studies an the X-ray astronomy payload (ISRO). The paper gives technical details and parameters on the launch vehicle, the satellite, the instruments and scientific goals and data utilization.     

Remote sensing of precipitation by a satellite-borne microwave remote sensor

The problem of remote sensing of precipitation by a satellite-borne microwave rain scatterometer is discussed. A downward-looking scanning pencil-beam antenna system is used. The combination of the range-gate method and low side lobe level is used to separate echoes from precipitation layers in the main lobe from ground clutter in the side lobes. Various parameters of the satellite-borne microwave rain scatterometer are calculated and characteristics of systems at 10 and 34.45 GHz are considered. The transmitter peak power needed to observe precipitation with sufficient signal-to noise ratio is calculated by means of the radar equation. The signal (i.e. the received power from the resolution volume of the precipitation) and the received power due to the ground clutter are calculated and the signal-to-clutter ratio is obtained by applying the radar equation. An airborne microwave rain scatterometer is proposed for preliminary experiments.     

用于遥感卫星数传的新型波导阵列组合天线

从新的设计理念出发，提出一种新型的波导十字阵列组合辐射天线替代了赋形反射面天线，用于低轨遥感卫星的数传系统。文中论述了该天线的设计思路、设计过程，并列出了天线的主要性能。最后还简述了该天线在国内卫星上的应用及我国未来低轨遥感卫星数传天线的发展趋势。该天线已在我国多个卫星上成功应用。这种波导阵列组合天线结构紧凑、尺寸小，具有与国外通用的赋形反射面天线基本类似的性能，可达到星载数传天线的预定要求，而且为星载遥感器及其他载荷留出了更大的对地安装空间。     

某遥感卫星平台的微振动试验研究

为了研究动量轮/控制力矩陀螺造成的微小振动在卫星结构内的传递规律,文章利用某遥感卫星平台在国内首次开展了气浮和悬吊两种状态下的卫星微振动对比研究试验。分别在两种边界下进行了背景噪声测试及模态试验,分析了两种边界条件对试验结果的影响;测量了动量轮/控制力矩陀螺工作造成的微振动响应。通过对试验结果的分析,总结了典型微振动源的主要扰动成分及其传播规律。研究表明:两种边界引入的噪声对试验结果的影响均较小,微振动响应在传播过程中会大幅衰减;动量轮及控制力矩陀螺工作时引起的扰动响应从总体上看受边界的影响不大。