Earth observation

Arianespace has announced that it intends to launch the UAE’s second reconnaissance satellite, Falcon Eye 2, on board a Soyuz satellite launch vehicle from the Guiana Space Centre in early March 2020. Falcon Eye 2 was originally slated to be launched on board an Arianespace Vega satellite launch vehicle, but …

exactEarth Ltd. and Hisdesat have announced that in partnership they have been selected by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) to provide satellite-AIS data services for a four-year period. Hisdesat, as prime contractor, will provide EMSA with exactView RT, exactEarth’s second-generation real-time satellite-AIS data service. Actual revenues under this framework contract …

The UAE Space Agency and the Saudi Space Commission met on the sidelines of the Saudi-Emirati Coordination Council in Riyadh, the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on 10 January 2020, where both parties officially activated their Memorandum of Understanding that was initially signed last year. The activation …

Advances in technology for observing the earth from space have resulted in the formation of a new company which will bring a range of innovative satellite intelligence and data services to market. 4 Earth Intelligence (4EI) has pioneered the use of satellite data for smart monitoring and analysis creating city, …

In the presence of Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt’s Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Stéphane Romatet, France’s Ambassador to Egypt, Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES) President Jean-Yves Le Gall opened the first joint France-Egypt Space Seminar in Cairo on 14 January 2020. At this event, Egypt reaffirmed its …

ESA’s Aeolus satellite has been returning profiles of Earth’s winds since 3 September 2018, just after it was launched – and after months of careful testing these measurements are considered so good that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is now using them in their forecasts. The decision to …

As part of the official visit to China of Frédérique Vidal, the Minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Centre national d’etudes spatiales (CNES) President Jean-Yves Le Gall and Bai Chunli, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), signed a framework agreement on space cooperation on 13 January 2020. …

Group 42, an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company, announced today that it has acquired Bayanat for Mapping and Surveying Services LLC, an end-to-end and customised geospatial data products and services provider. Bayanat has been a leader in the geospatial domain since its launch in 2010, delivering various …

Thales Alenia Space (the joint venture between Thales, 67% and Leonardo, 33%) and Thales have signed a contract with The French defense procurement agency Direction générale de l’armement (DGA) to carry out a concept study concerning intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications using a StratobusTM type platform to meet French …

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Defence Agency (EDA) are embarking on new cooperative projects for exploring unknown or potentially hazardous environments: harnessing drones for the monitoring of disaster-stricken regions or toxic spill sites and making use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to navigate across the surface of asteroids …