NASA's extensive Earth Science program uses the unique vantage point of space to advance scientific understanding of our planet as an integrated system. Satellite measurements form the essential foundation for Earth System Science, resolving a broad range of time and space scales and advancing knowledge of the connections between ocean, atmosphere, and land processes. The satellite observations, when coupled with understanding derived from research, improve the decision-making and lives of every person.

NASA’s Earth Science program is composed of 4 elements: a Flight element that develops, launches, and operates a fleet of Earth-observing satellites and instruments; an interdisciplinary, competitive, integrative Research and Analysis element covering all aspects of Earth System Science through analysis of domestic and international remotely sensed and in situ measurements and modeling; an Applied Sciences element that builds capacity in user communities, and develops and tests focused information products based on Earth observations and models to support a wide range of decision-makers; and an Earth Science Technology Office that uses competitive grants to advance component, instrument, and data processing technologies as well as conducts in-space technology demonstrations using CubeSats.

The presentation will highlight key recent accomplishments from NASA’s Earth Science Division program, providing unique insights into key Earth systems and examples of societal benefit from applications including disaster and extreme event response support. Particular emphasis will be placed on partnerships – both international and with the private sector; the need for free and open data exchange; the use of constellations of spacecraft and integrated analyses of global data from multiple sources; and the abilities of decadal-scale remotely sensed time series to illuminate the existence – and causes – of variability and trends in our planet’s environment.

JAXA’s earth observation programs aim to monitor the earth for national security, disaster risk management and tackle the climate change. National security and disaster risk management are mainly implemented by high resolution satellites. Climate change is monitored by global observing satellites. In order to fulfil these purposes, a data continuity is a key element to make a plan for future earth observation programs. Therefore, JAXA creates a series of missions.
A series of Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) carries high resolution optical instruments and synthetic aperture radars (SAR). Currently ALOS-2 which carries a L-band SAR onboard is in operation, and its data is used for a variety of fields, particularly for disaster monitoring. ALOS-3 which has a high resolution optical instrument and ALOS-4 which has a wide swath L-band SAR will be launched in JFY 2020. A series of Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) monitors greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, in the atmosphere. GOSAT-1 has been in operation for more than a decade. GOSAT-1 data shows that the global atmospheric monthly average of CO2 concentration exceeded 400 ppm in December 2015. GOSAT-2, a successor of GOSAT-1, was launched in October 2018. GOSAT-2 is under calibration and validation to prepare for its data release scheduled one year after its launch. A series of Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) measures parameters of the ground, atmosphere and ocean essential to monitor for understanding the climate change by an optical instrument and a passive microwave radiometer. The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR-2) onboard GCOM-W is widely used for operational weather forecast, fishery application, climate change research and so on. AMSR observed a minimum sea ice extent over the Arctic Ocean in September 2012. GCOM-C carrying an optical instrument with nineteen-channel of spectral bands, the Second Generation Global Imager (SGLI), was launched in December 2017. JAXA started distribution of SGLI data from December 2018. The core observatory of Global Precipitation Measuring (GPM) mission which is a joint mission by JAXA and NASA carries JAXA’s dual frequency microwave radar and monitors global precipitation.
In addition, JAXA challenges new satellite technologies. Super Low Altitude Test Satellite (SLATS) launched in December 2017 flies in an orbit less than 300km using an ion engine with measuring the upper atmosphere environment and taking a photo of the earth. A doppler radar for monitoring clouds to be installed on EarthCARE which is a joint mission by JAXA and ESA is under development. A laser radar technology in a low earth orbit and a high resolution optical instrument from a geostationary orbit are in a study phase. These technologies will bring new opportunities to monitor the earth.

ISRO’s EO missions provides continuity of data at various spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions on an assured basis. A series of satellites, with instruments that cover the entire electromagnetic spectrum operating from LEO and GSO, have been realized in the past. These satellite information are part and parcel of all the National Projects of India. In the current scenario the demand for data has increased many fold and therefore based on the requirements of users for the thematic applications like natural resources monitoring, ocean and atmospheric studies and cartography, several newer satellites are realized time to time. These satellites are categorized under (i) Land/water resources applications (RESOURCESAT series and RISAT series); (ii) Ocean/atmospheric studies (OCEANSAT series, INSAT-VHRR, INSAT-3D, Megha-Tropiques and SARAL); and (iii) Large scale mapping applications (CARTOSAT series). ISRO apart from realizing the launch as well as the satellites is also responsible to planning of the satellites acquire , archive , process the data finally disseminate the data to the users within and out side the country. ISRO also provides Geospatial web services through Bhuvan. The free data is made available through NOEDA / BHUVAN as well as the other portals like MOSDAC. Users can download IRS Data & Products through this.
Remote sensing data is a tool and gives inputs to the projects related to the social goals and sustainable development of the country. The geospatial information related projects like Smart cities, Clean Ganga , Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana , National High way assets monitoring etc needs timely and accurate data. ISRO supports the data requirements of all such projects and also facilitates the users to use the RS data through Bhuvan for most of these applications.

The current presentation will provide the details of the current orbiting satellites the global archives and the applications that they put into along with the glimpses of the future Earth Observation satellites and various requirements of user community. Apart from this the focus will be on the ongoing International collaborations w.r.t. to International Ground Stations, Calibration of sensors , and also the data exchange programmes.

The presentation will give a comprehensive overview of China earth observation program highlighting China High-resolution Earth Observation System and earth observation missions in the China Civil Space Infrastructure Program.

As one of the sixteen major national science and technology projects, China High-resolution Earth Observation System(CHEOS) aims to establish a system in the framework of five key components including a space-based sub-system, a near space sub-system, an aviation sub-system, a data sub-system and an application sub-system. CHEOS is targeted to get the time-space coordinated, all-day and all-weather earth observation capacity and form an industrial chain of spatial information. Since the implementation of CHEOS in 2010, it has tremendously improved earth observation and data application capability of China.

Besides the construction of CHEOS, China has initiated the civil space infrastructure program, including the combination of three systems in communication, earth observation and navigation, as well as the relevant ground facilities, among which the earth observation system focuses mainly in three series, i.e. the terrestrial observation, the marine observation and the atmosphere observation. It will establish a system consisting of seven constellations and satellites of the three series including Terrestrial Carbon monitoring satellite, Terrestrial water resources, Ocean Salinity Satellite, atmosphere environment monitoring satellite, water resource satellite which will greatly benefit the scientific research on earth sciences, supply valuable data for global climate research study and provide cooperation opportunities for international partners.

The wide availability and accessibility of open data, coupled with the design of new technologies related to data processing systems and services, has changed the landscape of Earth observation (EO) applications. Studies that took months can now be done in days. These advances are particularly relevant to low- and middle-income countries, where EO information production now requires minimal infrastructure investment.

The availability of big data repositories which allow data analysis to be performed on the server side is changing the way researchers extract information about the Earth. These new technologies enable data analysis methods to work with long-term image time series, without the burden of downloading and managing these big data sets.

In this talk, we will focus on the development of the GEO Knowledge Hub. This hub contains a set of curated and linked documents that contain relevant information for Earth observation applications. Reproducing a result that uses EO data requires a combination of theory, data processing and analysis algorithms, and in-situ and remotely-sensed datasets. The goal of the GEO Knowledge Hub is to provide, in a single place, access to all documents which are required to reuse an Earth observation applications. These documents include: (a) the research paper or report which describes the methods and results; (b) the software algorithm used for processing; (c) the in-situ and imagery data used; (d) the results. Currently, these components are stored and distributed in different ways. Methods are described in papers and reports, shared as HTML or PDF files. Algorithms are mostly written in scripting languages (R or python) embedded in Jupyter Notebooks or markdown files. More and more, space-based data is stored in the cloud, and in-situ data is available either in a trusted repository. However, current search engines do not provide links between these components of a document, thus reducing their fitness for use. The GEO Knowledge Hub will provide linkages between these components of an Earth observation application.

The ultimate goal of the GEO Knowledge Hub is to support the development of a new generation of Earth observation users, which will be able to take advantage of these new technologies. Adoption of server-side big data analytics will reduce the barriers to entry and the production of innovative results. It will also broaden the impact of Earth observation results. Important results can be reused and regional comparisons become easier to produce. In short, the new technologies will have a significant impact on how the global community uses Earth observation data.