Another quarter has flown by. So welcome to EO news Q3 2019! If you are interested in the major EO related events in Q1 and Q2 2019, please visit the links below:
Q3 2019
Launches
Have small sats reached maturity?
Not a launch, but Landsat 10 is going to be known as Landsat Next:
Update on #Landsat 10 aka Landsat Next. Similar to MSS to TM improvements, new capabilities envisioned:
– new and more spectral channels
– higher spatial resolution
– more frequent temporal revisit
– possible constellation
While maintaining mission & measurement continuity. π https://t.co/B53OwQkH5X— Mike Wulder (@mikewulder) August 23, 2019
Is the chance of a collision increasing? ESA had to move Aeolus this Quarter:
For the first time ever, ESA has performed a 'collision avoidance manoeuvre' to protect one of its satellites from colliding with a 'mega constellation'#SpaceTraffic pic.twitter.com/kmXvAgpj1U
— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) September 2, 2019
Not launched, but soon to be – Satellites with AI.
UK-led companies involved in MANTIS.
Data
Great news on Analysis Ready Data – this time for SAR.
Tropomi is improved!
New and improved! TROPOMI made the switch to smaller pixels yesterday and now we can see plumes in even more detail. Here's an example of tropospheric NO2 from gas-fired powerplants near Kuwait City, from 5 August (upper left, prior to the switch) and 6 August after the switch. pic.twitter.com/Sy41xET5CM
— TROPOMI (@tropomi) August 7, 2019
Lots of truisms here:
Expensive. Difficult. Limited. Such holds true for SAR. New supply will help, but the most important key to adoption will be in making SAR imagery "easy" to use.
Formats fitting into data pipelines, persistent monitoring, and developing analytics standards for SAR are needed. https://t.co/ngP1erjxVw
— Dallas Kasaboski (@NSRKasaboski) September 12, 2019
Microsoft releases 18m building footprints. Remember, we still need great training data!
We need to start talking about STAC and COG more in Europe. This is massive:
BIG NEWS: @USGSLandsat will release Collection 2 L-2 of #Landsat data in #COG format w/ #STAC catalog.
We @OurRadiantEarth are super excited to have lead #STAC development. Kudos to our tech fellow @opencholmes who worked tirelessly to make this happen.https://t.co/NGWgZEzezR
— Hamed Alemohammad (@HamedAlemo) September 26, 2019
GeoTiff v1.1 is an open standard!
v3 AsterDem is out:
Version 3 of the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model Released https://t.co/u4EPMIaWzU @GISLounge pic.twitter.com/xnjjTsEmJe
— MapScaping (@MapScaping) August 9, 2019
Projects / Workflows
ESRI is getting more into deep learning. This time identifying building footprints.
Want a list of all the Earth Engine Apps? Then go here.
Want to run pygis in a Jupyter notebook?
8 tips for using GeoPandas – this one is written by me:
Raster image processing on Sentinel hub. A really nice guide.
Technology
Earthpy is here. Excited to give this a go in Python.
Deep learning and Geospatial. Great resource here:
This is a terrific resource for anyone interested in applying deep learning to geospatial datahttps://t.co/lR0z9unayJ pic.twitter.com/kARPNvay0h
— Jeremy Howard (@jeremyphoward) July 13, 2019
Introducing Solaris – are you using it?
We at @CosmiqWorks have released our #geospatial analysis/#ComputerVision software package, Solaris! Now out: a blog post describing the library and highlighting a few of the features! Check it out: https://t.co/5EYR1TRe5n
— Nick Weir (@NickWeir09) July 23, 2019
New GeoPandas update:
There is a release candidate for version 0.6.0!
This is a refactor of the internals based on the new pandas ExtensionArray interface, for better integration with pandas.
Given the many changes under the hood: please test it!See more in this blog post: https://t.co/HF3VlDGJ77
— GeoPandas (@geopandas) August 13, 2019
Deep Learning with Google Earth Engine.
GDAL and OGR – great stuff:
How to automate geodata processing with #GDAL and #OGR π οΈ#OSGeo #gistribehttps://t.co/7rEUORWvi6
— Jakob Miksch (@JakobMiksch) September 22, 2019
Rasterio – why are you not using it?
Rasterio 1.0.26 is on pypi now. The wheels include a more optimized GDAL shared lib, finally. I hope you enjoy smaller installs, faster programs, and fewer bugs.
— Sean Gillies (@sgillies) August 26, 2019
Events
Phi week took place. Check out the videos and materials here.
Lots of FOSS4G events took place. So many videos and material to share. Start here.
Then go here for the UK version:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg0wX857AHUGM3qCzR6PcwQ
Google Earth Engine geoforgood took place. Some amazing stuff came out of it. Search #geo4good.
SpaceNet 5 is underway:
#spacenet5 has officially launched on @Topcoder! The challenge will run til Oct. 25th. Register/compete here: https://t.co/b6KrPQ9Zvr. Find more about the challenge & download the #datasets here: https://t.co/D3dXOzVrTd. Good luck! pic.twitter.com/fe4B2Tsunz
— Ryan Lewis (@RyanSLewis07) September 3, 2019
Companies / Investment / Governmental
Cesium closes a big investment round and spins out as a separate company:
BIG day here at Cesium! We're happy to share that we've closed on a Series A investment and spun out as an independent company. We can't wait for what's next https://t.co/Ava9v5LWRv pic.twitter.com/di2HosKoKo
— Cesium (@CesiumJS) July 9, 2019
Planet and analytic feeds launched. Detecting objects.
Stop downloading satellite imagery and do it with a virtual machine – thanks to vito.
Up42 launches – Open EO data and analytics platform. One to keep an eye on.
Descartes labs working wonders with blurry images.
Azavea doing great things with building footprints.
Yooo big news! @azavea just published a countrywide comparison of @bingmaps 100M building footprint dataset with an extract of all of @openstreetmap's data for the U.S. Thanks to @jharpster and the team that open sourced this data! Go have fun with it: https://t.co/KRizO9l1pY. pic.twitter.com/yDfbwpS77Y
— Joe Morrison (@mouthofmorrison) July 25, 2019
Points of Interest / News
How to support Open Source and stay sane. Great article on Nature.
If you have the time please try this SAR MOOC from EO College . I did the first iteration and, honestly, it was worth every second.
All of Planets satellites visualised:
NEW!! π Super happy to share a new #dataviz project that visualizes how Planet's satellites creates a full image of Earth's landmass in ONE day! π
See how the Earth is slowly build up from each of the whopping 600,000 images taken in a single day π°οΈhttps://t.co/7vtn7B0evQ pic.twitter.com/pCcb5Py0yr
— Nadieh Bremer (@NadiehBremer) July 25, 2019
Wow:
Did you know that you can add a world map to QGIS (3.0 (?) and above) with one simple command?#qgis pic.twitter.com/vefQQDl1Xr
— Patrick Stotz (@PatrickStotz) August 28, 2019
How high is Earth Observation?
Want to get a handle on how high an #EarthObservation satellite flies? Check out this graphic (esp the scalable vector graphic version where you can zoom into the detail)@Skyrora_Ltd @spacegovuk @SatAppsCatapult @SoX_SA @capellaspace @GeosciencesEdhttps://t.co/ooqeFVzQyr
— Iain H Woodhouse π³δΌζ© (@fortiain) September 6, 2019
The ethics of Earth Observation.
Brilliant again from @spatialthoughts.
I published a new tutorial on building a processing python plugin for #QGIS. This is a much simple alternative to plugins and results in a better user experience. I also demonstrate how you can add buttons/menus that can launch algorithms from your plugin. https://t.co/OgdplAZRcu pic.twitter.com/cO6OGnYPz6
— Ujaval Gandhi (@spatialthoughts) September 19, 2019
Landsat orbit explained:
Aha! That's how it works. #Landsat orbital swath & data acquisition.
Earth rotates, satellite in fixed orbit. Set 185 km swath width. One orbit every ~99 minutes, 15 orbits/day, complete global coverage in 16 days. Image & repeat.
Source for full video: https://t.co/4BQSZfKa5b pic.twitter.com/AStubplYXJ
— Mike Wulder (@mikewulder) September 25, 2019
Finally… Even Rouault wins the Sol Katz award. A Geospatial world without Even would be a much poorer place:
Just want to say thank you β¦@EvenRouaultβ©…your work touches just about every FOSS4G software project and we all benefit hugely from your hard work! #FOSS4G2019 pic.twitter.com/2aOrRzP1hB
— Tim Sutton (@timlinux) August 28, 2019
Did I miss something? Let me know info@acgeospatial.co.uk and I will add it to the list.
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