Ten years and a 4 billion mile journey! That’s what it took for Rosetta to hang out with a comet. Rosetta is a probe sent by the European Space Agency to orbit Churyumov-Gerasimenko (I know, how that feels!) or simply called as Comet 67P , the lucky comet that got the good company of a human made object!
Take a look at this!
See something strange about it’s orbit? It’s triangular with rounded edges! And that’s the secret recipe for the great success! The previous endeavor including ESA’s Giotto, and NASA’s Deep Impact weren’t able to stick around for longer. Click here if you would like to read more about the Economist’s explanation on what made Rosetta’s orbit so unique.
According to their official website, “The journey to the comet was not straightforward, however. Since its launch in 2004, Rosetta had to make three gravity-assist flybys of Earth and one of Mars to help it on course to its rendezvous with the comet. This complex course also allowed Rosetta to pass by asteroids Šteins and Lutetia, obtaining unprecedented views and scientific data on these two objects.”
Going at 55000 km/hr, the comet is somewhere half way between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a mere 405 million kilometers from Earth! After arrival, Rosetta took the comet’s temperature (-70 degrees Celcius) using it’s visible, infrared and thermal spectrometer.
One of the very first spectacular images were released by the ESA!
A new era in space exploration has just begun!
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Being a start up company does not only imply having new ideas, developing new methodologies and finally creating a new product, but also to care how to promote and dispose it. EOMAP, a Munich based company that I already reported of, has been specializing in information about water quality and bathymetry derived from satellite data and has become a leading provider of aquatic remote sensing solutions in the last years . Last week, the company has launched EOMAP Web Store where clients have direct access to global water quality and bathymetric data products derived from satellite imagery.
The EOMAP Web Store enables clients to instantly purchase worldwide off-the-shelf eoBathymetry 15/30m products and order subscriptions to the eoWaterQuality 30/500m service for continuous water quality monitoring over selected geographic areas of interest. The easy-to-use web store allows clients to search for appropriate products by location and date and place their orders online.
“By offering these products through the automated EOMAP Web Store, we can provide our customers with faster access to the satellite-derived data solutions they need at a significantly reduced cost,” said Dr. Thomas Heege, EOMAP CEO. “Up-to-date, standardized aquatic information has never been easier to access and incorporate into the business workflow.”
Delivered on a per-project basis for the past several years through the EOMAP processing center near Munich, EOMAP eoWaterQuality and eoBathymetry offerings for many geographic areas (see third figure) are available off-the-shelf through the Web Store, where custom orders may also be placed.
All EOMAP products are derived from a variety of satellite systems, including Landsat 7 and 8, MODIS Aqua and Terra, and soon upcoming Sentinel 2 and 3 satellites. Current off-the-shelf products are offered at 15/30- and 500-meter resolution, but they can be integrated with higher resolution products, using data from WorldView-2, Kompsat-3 and RapidEye.
EOMAP products are relied upon extensively by industries ranging from aquaculture, oil & gas, and desalination to environmental monitoring, navigation and hydrography.
The standard EOMAP eoWaterQuality service is offered at two resolution levels – 30 and 500 meters. Both offerings monitor turbidity and related suspended matter, organic absorption, chlorophyll and related algal blooms in water bodies. Designed for monitoring of large coastal zones and inland waterways, the eoWaterQuality 500 service can deliver daily updates, as requested. Priority delivery within hours of satellite acquisition is available for first continents. The EOMAP eoWaterQuality 30 offering can monitor coastal and inland waterways, including smaller water bodies, up to four times per month.
EOMAP eoBathymetry provides bathymetric data for water areas worldwide, often within less than 24hours after ordering. It is created from 30m spatial resolution satellite imagery and sharpened to 15m using additional satellite sensor information. The products cover shallow-water coastal areas to average depths of 20 meters.
The EOMAP Web Store is the first customized online geospatial portal powered by the geo-collaboration platform technology of CloudEO AG in Munich, which offers clients the IT power, data access and software tools to develop products and services. In addition, the CloudEO Store platform enables clients to market those products and services.
store.eomap.com – poster
Bathymetric Data by EOMAP – Europe
EOMAP Map Viewer showing the ares of available products
Product view of the Online Store
Source: EOMAP
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