Remote sensing

Ocean Remote Sensing Program Reaches New Stage

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been advancing its Ocean of Things (OoT) program. The program seeks to enable persistent maritime situational awareness over large ocean areas by deploying thousands of small, low-cost floats that could form a distributed sensor network.

Each smart float would contain a suite of commercially available sensors to collect environmental data – such as ocean temperature, sea state, and location – as well as activity data about commercial vessels, aircraft, and even maritime mammals moving through the area. The floats would transmit data periodically via satellite to a cloud network for storage and real-time analysis, according to darpa.mil.

While several programs over the past decade have measured the ocean environment on a large scale (>10 km), the Ocean of Things(OoT) program will provide measurements that are orders of magnitude finer (<10m).  

DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office has recently granted Numurus, a company specializing in smart IoT solutions, a $2.3M contract to integrate its Smart IoT Ecosystem into thousands of satellites connected remote monitoring devices.   

The technology will provide smart information ecosystems for the increasing number of robotic inspection solutions and smart device fleets.

Remote sensing

Roscosmos suggests new group of Earth remote sensing satellites "Sovereign's Eye"

Russian state space corporation Roscosmos has suggested to create a group of Earth remote sensing satellites called "Sovereign's Eye," Roscosmos's head Dmitry Rogozin told reporters on Friday.

"We have presented a new project which we consider promising. After a successful launch from the Vostochny spaceport in December, we have reinforced the group of Earth remote sensing satellites. We are suggesting a project called 'Sovereign's Eye' so that we can see the dynamics of any processes on Earth," Rogozin said.

This group of satellites may be found helpful by the Russian Emergencies Ministry and agricultural workers. "For instance, for the Russian Emergencies Ministry, we will be able to deploy firefighting aircraft to an area of 25 sq m. We will also present the project to argicultural workers. This will include using drones in agriculture and the possibility of monitoring arable land," Rogozin noted.

The "Sovereign's Eye" system will also help monitor changes in infrastructure facilities, the Roscosmos head noted. "This will be very helpful for the authorities. All buildings and changes in infrastructure facilities are seen from space," he said.