Level-2 News
Argotec inaugurates new satellite factory [link]
"Italian smallsat manufacturer Argotec formally opened a new manufacturing facility that will allow it to increase its production rate while it looks at new business opportunities in Europe and the United States."
New Data Shows a Rapidly Expanding Space Workforce [link]
"The sector added 26,000+ jobs between 2022 and 2023 in the space heavy-hitters, including the US, Japan, India, and Europe, according to a new report from Space Foundation.
This growth is about four times larger than the number of workers added a year prior and points to a thriving global space economy that has nearly doubled in size over the past decade."
Wyvern Raises $6M To Boost Hyperspectral Data Biz [link]
"The only company selling hyperspectral data from space on the open market announced a $6M fundraising round this week, led by Squadra Ventures with participation from Uncork Capital and Y Combinator.
Wyvern, the Edmonton, Canada space data firm that has amassed $16M in private capital, gathers data from three satellites with hyperspectral sensors.
The company expects three more spacecraft to launch in the next 18 months, and is focused on expanding to the US market, adding to its 36-person team, and developing novel deployable optics."
Umbra Lands SDA Contract to Explore Integrating Remote Sensing in PWSA [link]
"Umbra has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract by the Space Development Agency (SDA) to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating its commercial remote sensing capabilities into SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA)."
New Landsat Science Team Request for Proposal Now Open [link]
"The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA have officially opened a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the 2025-2029 Landsat Science Team. This team will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the Landsat program, supporting the ongoing operations of Landsat 8 and 9 while contributing to the development of Landsat Next, which is set to launch in 2030/2031."
Grant from Navigation Fund to Support Source Cooperative [link]
"Radiant Earth has received funding from The Navigation Fund’s Open Science Initiative to accelerate development of Source Cooperative, their data publishing utility.
Source currently hosts over 450TB of data (thanks to generous support from AWS and Azure) shared by 66 organizations or individuals, and receive over 3 million requests for data each month, serving around 2.5TB of data per month."
Developer's Orbit
Pangeo Showcase: Icechunk: An Open-Source Transactional Storage Engine for Zarr [link]
"Learn about Icechunk storage engine, a new open-source library and specification for the storage of multidimensional array (a.k.a. tensor) data in cloud object storage. Icechunk works together with Zarr, augmenting its core data model with features that enhance performance, collaboration, and safety in a multi-user cloud-computing context."
object-store-rs: A Python interface and pyo3 integration to the object-store crate [link]
Check out this Python package that provides a uniform API for interacting with object storage services and local files. Developed by Development Seed.

Snapshots

Earth from Space: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [link]
"Situated in the central region of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh serves as the nation’s legislative, financial, administrative, diplomatic and commercial hub, home to over seven million inhabitants.
Covering an area of around 1550 sq km, the city sits at approximately 600 m above sea level on the eastern part of the Najd plateau in the Arabian Peninsula. Like much of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh has a desert climate with extreme summer temperatures that can reach up to 50°C.
This image, captured on 14 September 2024, is part of the stunning initial set of images delivered by Copernicus Sentinel-2C, the third satellite in the Sentinel-2 mission."

Emilia-Romagna hit by severe flooding [link]
"Cities in Emilia-Romagna, a region in northern Italy, have been hit by severe flooding after heavy rainfall over the weekend. The flooding affected Bologna (not pictured), and other cities in the surrounding area including Modena and Reggio Emilia.
Flooded areas across the region are visible in this multi-temporal image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission between 8 and 20 October 2024. The comparison uses an image from 8 October (before the floods) and one from 20 October (after the floods). The blue areas highlight the areas impacted by flooding."
Interesting reads
Machine Learning Could Improve Extreme Weather Warnings [link]
"A deep learning technique could reduce the error in 10-day weather forecasts by more than 90%, allowing communities to better prepare for extreme events such as heat waves."
The Roadmap of GeoAI — Part 2 [link]
In this second part of the series, Julia Leonardi covers the fundamental concepts of geospatial data and artificial intelligence methods in the context of GeoAI analysis.
Storm Boris and European flooding September 2024 [link]
"The article looks at the exceptional rainfall and flooding associated with storm Boris in September 2024 and discuss how well the forecasts from ECMWF and the Copernicus Emergency Management Service’s European Flood Awareness System EFAS anticipated the event."
What is a Coral Reef? [link]
"Coral reefs cover only 1% of the ocean floor, but support an estimated 25% of all marine life in the ocean, earning them the moniker ‘rainforest of the sea.’ They also play a critical role for coastal communities; preventing coastal erosion, protecting coastlines from hurricane damage, and generating $36 billion in annual income worldwide.
Follow this article to learn from Juan Torres-Pérez, a research scientist and coral reef expert at NASA Ames Research Center, as he discusses the science behind coral reefs and the crucial role they play in both marine ecosystems and human communities."

What is Air Quality? [link]
Follow this article to hear from Kristina Pistone, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, as she explains the significance of air quality and its impact on both human health and the environment. With nearly 99% of the global population breathing air that exceeds WHO pollution guidelines, understanding air quality has never been more critical. Pistone's research focuses on how atmospheric particles affect climate and clouds, highlighting the vital connection between air quality and everyday life.
What Makes Space AI So Tricky? [link]
"US satellite operator Spire will work with Mission Control, a Canadian space software company, on a demo mission to launch in 2025 that will see a Spire-built EO satellite use Mission Control machine learning models to perform analyses on orbit.
Founded in 2015, Mission Control develops software for autonomous space operations. The company was among the first to deploy a deep-learning algorithm in Earth orbit, and the first to do so in lunar orbit during ispace’s first attempt to land on the Moon.
Payload caught up with Mission Control CTO Michele Faragalli to understand what the mission is set to prove."
Tackling the Sargassum Challenge: Reflections on the Conference on Sargassum [link]
"The "Tackling the Sargassum Challenge" conference in Grenada brought together over 300 stakeholders to address the growing sargassum crisis in the Caribbean. Leaders like Grenada’s Prime Minister Mitchell emphasized creating a regional framework for sargassum collection and the sustainable use of this biomass in industries like biofuels and cosmetics. The event highlighted the crucial role of Earth Observation (EO) in monitoring sargassum blooms, with real-time data aiding both mitigation efforts and industry planning. ESA and the World Bank are exploring collaborations to operationalize large-scale sargassum detection, ensuring long-term sustainable development in the region’s Blue Economy."
Open Roles
Senior Remote Sensing Scientist // constellr [link]
Data Manager for Machine Learning Datasets // ECMWF [link]
Several Open Roles at ECMWF [link]
EUMETSAT 2025 Internship Programme [link]
Research engineer on Artificial Intelligence for Ecological Digital Twins // Wageningen University & Research [link]