[gmes.info] ESA
received 12 proposals offering to provide data from more than 40 Earth
Observation satellites to GMES Services over the next years. Accordingly the fleet of GMES contributing missions is constantly
increasing.
ESA,
the European Space Agency, is the coordinator of the space component of
GMES and is ensuring the flow of Earth Observation data into GMES
Services along with the access to these data. ESA received 12 proposals
offering to provide data from more than 40 European and non-European
Earth Observation satellites to GMES Services over the next years.Thus,
the fleet of GMES contributing missions is constantly increasing – the
German 5-satellite RapidEye constellation remains as the latest
mission, launched on 29 August 2008. Among other satellites there are
ESA Member States’ missions, such as France’s Spot and Pleiades
satellites, Germany’s TerraSAR-X, Italy’s CosmoSkyMed, the UK-led DMC
constellation. ESA and EUMESAT (the European Organisation for the
Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) offer their data free of
charge, while other agencies do favourable conditions to the GMES
Services.
Thanks to harmonised protocols and standards
developed by European Space Agencies through the Heterogeneous Mission
Accessibility (HMA) Project, ESA is able to harmonise the data flow and
data access.
Moreover, to ensure that GMES Services have
quick, easy and coherent access to the data from all of the missions,
ESA will provide a dedicated Data Access Portal where GMES Services can
obtain relevant information and access the data products.
More information at:
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEMOBSO4KKF_LPgmes_0.html
