CBERS for Africa and CBERS-2B status

From May 12 to 15, I've been to Cachoeira Paulista, SP to install 2 computer racks to be used in the CBERS for Africa project.

Getting the racks in the appointed place was not an easy task.

Each rack contains a complete system for CBERS reception. There are 3 PowerEdge servers, one for each channel: CCD1, CCD2 and HWDT-Q, a disk array and a tape changer, plus a desktop computer used for displaying the Moving Windows and for checking the satellite schedule.

We receive HWDT-Q in order to extract the WFI stream and GPS and Star Sensor data. The HRC stream won't be processed. In time the racks will be sent to Africa.

In his last trip to China, Lula signed an agreement for CBERS-2B reception in South Africa, the Canary Islands and Egypt. The Chinese are already receiving data in South Africa and our tests in Maspalomas (Canary Islands) and Aswan (Egypt) went well. There are still some tests to be made with the antenna in Maspalomas, they are scheduled for May 11-24. Unfortunately CBERS-2B entered safe mode on May 12, it appears its due to some problem in the attitude control system. Let's hope its fixable.

XIV Brazilian Remote Sensing Symposium

I'm back from Natal, RN, Brazil, where I went for the XIV SBSR. This year's symposium was not as good as previous versions, maybe because the global economic crisis has reduced the number of sponsors.

The schedule was different from the other editions, in the mornings there was no break during sessions, it went straight from 9:00 to 12:00. In the past, there was a coffee break in the middle which allowed us to take a look at the exposition and to grab something to eat and go to the bathroom. Without the coffee break, the exposition was mostly deserted in the morning. This also happened because the exposition was at the back of the building, people could enter the convention center, go to their sessions, leave and never look at the exposition. If I remember correctly, you had to walk through the exposition in the last edition.

Another problem I had was that some of the sessions I wanted to watch happened at the same time, so I had to choose one and miss the other. It's hard to please everyone when doing a schedule and this time I was the unlucky part.

On a sort of positive note, for the first time, I heard an explanation for the problem with CBERS's CCD relative calibration. Flávio Ponzoni from INPE said, answering a question from the audience, that it seems as though the CCD camera is not radiometrically stable, that the detectors response vary from pass to pass making systematic relative calibration very difficult. Let's hope that the new sensors in CBERS-3 and CBERS-4 will do better.

On friday, May 1st, I was finally able to do some site seeing before catching my flight home. Together with some friends from USGS and NASA, and despite some rain in the morning, we went on a crazy buggy ride on the dunes. I highly recommend it, truly unforgettable.

GEO announces free Landsat imagery

The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) announced on 20 November 2008 that "the world will soon have the unrestricted access at no charge to the Landsat archive" .

Remote-sensing satellites are impartial and essential recorders of the fast-moving story of the Earth’s changing surface,” said José Achache, Director of the GEO Secretariat. “Landsat’s nearly four decades of accumulated Earth imagery data will provide an historical record that, combined with continuous updates, will make it possible to interpret and anticipate changes to the Earth’s surface with far greater certainty than ever before.

It' s good to see that they recognized the pioneering role of INPE.

GEO’s announcement last year that the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellites (CBERS) would distribute its images free-of-charge was an essential first step.

INPE's catalog has been distributing free imagery from the CBERS family of satellites since 2004 and has already made available the Brazilian historical archive of MSS, TM and ETM+ data.

During the last year we've been working with the USGS Eros Data Center to ensure that the geometric and radiometric quality of those images match their own products' and creating tools to enable the exchange of those scenes using a common data format.

The validation of this work is being done this week in Sioux Falls but the latest version of our ground-station software already delivers some of those improvements to all users of Landsat imagery.