Level-2 News

Satellites watch ‘atmospheric river’ bring extreme rain to California [link]
“A so-called atmospheric river is bringing huge amounts of tropical moisture to California, prompting weather forecasters to issue alerts for high risks of flooding.”
Follow this page for related imagery from the GOES satellites that monitor the cyclone. [link]
Release of Collection 2.1 of S3 NRT Fire Radiative Power [link]
Collection 2.1 of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 Near Real Time (NRT) Level 2 (L2) Fire Radiative Power (FRP) product will be released on 12 January 2023.
SpaceX launches 114 small satellites on first mission of 2023 [link]
The first launch of 2023, the SpaceX’s Transporter mission carried dozens of Earth Observation satellites.
Transporter-6 was SpaceX’s sixth dedicated small-satellite rideshare mission. The 114 payloads on the flight included “cubesats, microsats, picosats and orbital transfer vehicles carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time”. Among them; radar satellites for ICEYE and Umbra, 4 optical satellites for Satellogic, 36 SuperDoves for Planet and several other earth observation satellites with focus ranging from weather data collection to crop monitoring.
Related:
Satellogic deployed ‘Albania-1’ and ‘Albania-2’ satellites
The satellites deployed for Satellogic included ‘Albania-1 and ‘Albania-2’, that will support the Republic of Albania as part of a recent 3-year constellation-as-a-service agreement entered into with Satellogic [link]. “The dedicated satellites will enable Albania to task and monitor its sovereign territory for a range of applications including agriculture management, border security, and environmental monitoring.”
First of Seven Ag-Specific Satellites Goes Into Orbit [link]
Onboard the same Falcon 9 was the first of seven ag-specific satellites, named, EOS SAT-1, manufactured by Dragonfly Aerospace. The constellation, which is expected to be fully deployed by 2025 will be focused on image data collection for agriculture. Data obtained from the EOS SAT-1 will support applications for crop monitoring, seasonal planning and assessments that analyse information such as soil moisture, yield prediction and biomass levels.
D-Orbit deployed ALISIO-1 for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain [link]
SpaceX’s Transporter-6 also carried D-Orbit’s transfer vehicles; satellite platforms able to deploy satellites in orbit. One of those satellites is ALISIO-1, equiped with an infrared camera capable of acquiring images in the 1 to 1.7 micron range. ALISIO-1’s mission is to deliver medium-high resolution images for the study of desertification, oil spills and wildfires
Vodafone will use Earth Observation data to provide better vegetation, soil moisture and other kind of data to farmers [link]
“Improving agriculture through digital tools is also the goal of a new partnership between Vodafone and the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Programme. The ESA’s satellite network produces remarkably detailed imaging data on drought, floods, and soil and crop health. Vodafone will integrate this data feed into MyFarmWeb, the cloud-based IoT platform run by Vodafone’s Vodacom subsidiary in South Africa. The MyFarmWeb cloud-based platform allows farmers to store, visualize and view the information gathered via agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and other data sources in the field.”
Earth Observation Conferences 2023 [link]
TerraWatch Space has made a list of all major conferences, workshops and events related to Earth Observation, space and satellite Remote Sensing in 2023
Developer’s Orbit
2022 Geospatial Python Packages Stats [link]
“Geospatial Python took off in 2022! Take a look at the statistics from common geospatial Python packages compared to 2021.”
Datasets
A list of open geospatial datasets available on AWS, Earth Engine, Planetary Computer, NASA CMR, and STAC Index [link]
Interesting reads
Weather Whiplash [NASA Earth Observatory]
The article explains the mechanics that charged the winter storm in the US and Canada during the last days of 2022 and the record-breaking warm temperatures in Europe in the first days of 2023.
Spoiler: It’s all about the polar vortex!
Learning
Joint Training School and Workshop on Dust Aerosol Detection and Monitoring [link]
“This online training school aims to build capacity and improve skills in aerosol detection and monitoring. The training school is jointly organised by EUMETSAT, WMO SDS-WAS Regional Center (which is managed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and AEMET, the Spanish Meteorological State Agency), and ACTRIS, with the support of Copernicus.”
Deadline for applications; 11 January 2023