European Space Imaging IKONOS data for ESA users

30 April 2009, 9:52am

30 April 2009 - The European Space Agency (ESA) and European Space Imaging (EUSI), the company that owns and operates the European IKONOS ground station, entered into an agreement that gives ESA access to more than 15 million square kilometers of IKONOS satellite imagery.

Within its Third Party Mission scheme, ESA provides to Earth Observation users data from non-ESA missions to complement the data from ESA EO missions and to support and build up the scientific user community for those data in Europe.

IKONOS as a Third Party Mission is available to ESA and ESA-approved projects for scientific research, applications development, or research and development in preparation for operational use in future, the so-called Category-1 use.

Typical application areas are disaster management and mitigation, civil protection, humanitarian aid, agriculture and forestry.

The available IKONOS data can now be browsed and ordered online through ESA’s EOLI system. A special link-up of EUSI’s Online User Services to ESA’s EOLI systems was developed by EOX IT Services GmbH. Archived products will be transferred on ESA’s request from EUSI’s production center to be stored at and disseminated from the Multi-Mission Facility Infrastructure of ESA which is located at the premises of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen.

“The IKONOS data complement the Third Party Mission Portfolio, ranging from low to medium resolution atmospheric or ocean monitoring missions to very high resolution satellite data such as the one provided by Ikonos. This further enables us to offer a wide range of Earth Observation data to the scientific user community”, ESA’s Third Party Mission Manager Bianca Hoersch said.

“Through ESA’s Third Party Mission Program, the European scientific community now has free access to commercial very high-resolution IKONOS satellite imagery. We are very happy about this agreement with ESA and are convinced that it will boost R&D projects which can now benefit from using our data”, said European Space Imaging’s General Manager Adrian Zevenbergen.

ESA

European Space Imaging

Geo: International