CANADIAN GOVERNMENT DATA AND PRODUCT NEEDS AND COLLABORATIVE GROUND SEGMENT PREPARATIONS FOR THE ESA SENTINELS MISSIONS

摘要

Canada and the European Space Agency (ESA) havernover 30 years of historical and fruitful collaboration onrnEarth Observation (EO) dating back to the 1979 signingrnof our initial Cooperation Agreement, and continuingrnunder a new Agreement to 2019. This longrncollaboration has significant heritage in therndevelopment, acquisition, reception, processing,rnapplications and mission contingency planning ofrnSynthetic Aperture RADAR and optical imagery whichrnhas translated into almost 20 years of collaboration onrnERS and almost a decade on ENVISAT.rnEnsuring continued access to and sharing of critical EOrndata between Canada and ESA to support our respectivernend users and applications which rely on these data is ofrnparamount importance. With the impending launches ofrnthe Copernicus program (formerly GMES) Sentinelsrnmissions, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) andrnNatural Resources Canada’s (NRCan) Canada Centrernfor Mapping and Earth Observation (CCMEO –rnformerly the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing,rnCCRS) struck an interdepartmental federal governmentrnTiger Team in 2012 with the mission to ensure timelyrnCanadian access to Sentinel 1, 2 and 3 data streams forrnthe future. In this paper, we will give an overallrnsummary of the proposed Canadian input to ESA as partrnof the Collaborative Ground Segment Initiative.rnCanadian priority user needs and requirements forrnSentinels data will be presented with examples of howrnand for which applications the data will be used and therndownstream products and tools that will be developed.rnWe will also describe the preparations being made onrnthe Canadian ground segment (i.e. stations and datarnmanagement) that will enable the collection andrndissemination of data from the Sentinels.