Heritage Missions orbiting the Earth

Introducing the ESA Heritage Missions Virtual Lab on EarthConsole®

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We are excited to announce the launch of the ESA Heritage Missions Virtual Lab hosted on the EarthConsole® platform powered by Progressive Systems. This virtual space offers customized data processing services to harness the inestimable legacy left by the Heritage Missions, all accessible via single sign-on.

If you are not familiar with Heritage Missions, they consist of over 45 non-operational earth observation missions, including cornerstone ESA missions such as the European Remote Sensing satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, and ENVISAT. These missions acquired data from various optical, radar, and atmospheric instruments for over 40 years.

As you can imagine, the preservation of data coming from these missions is of key importance for the ongoing environmental research on our planet. When combined with data from new satellites, Heritage Missions data provides a unique opportunity to look back in time and build long-term data series on a diverse range of applications such as climate change, sea levels, surface temperatures, melting ice, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, atmospheric composition, deforestation, urban mapping and much more.

That’s why we have collaborated with ESA to create this Lab which offers research centers and universities the chance to gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of Earth dynamics over time, by leveraging Heritage Missions data and related processors.

We have made sure to maintain the unique features of EarthConsole® intact, that means ensuring the processing capacity and data are co-located. This reduces the time taken for data transfer and enables completion of scalable processing campaigns within the stipulated time frame of research projects.

The Lab lets you:

  • Perform bulk processing campaigns (supervised by EarthConsole® experts) or on demand processing tasks (unsupervised and independently managed by the user) with the Small BAseline Subset – SBAS processor provided by IREA, a scientific and technological research institute belonging to the largest Italian research institution, the National Research Council (CNR). The service provides the possibility to generate soil deformation maps and time series from ERS and ENVISAT data. Additional processors will be integrated in the future.
  • Develop, test algorithms and do post-processing activities on a ready-to-use virtual machine with instant cloud data access, software for Heritage data analysis & visualization already installed and flexible computing resources and storage.
  • Receive expert support to integrate, in principle, any additional processors.
  • Access a set of tools to network and share research results with colleagues: a forum, a repository of processed datasets, and a library with relevant publications and media for consultation.

If you plan to use the lab services for research, educational, or pre-commercial purposes, you may be eligible to submit a sponsorship request to the ESA Network of Resources. If your application will be successful, it would allow you to receive a voucher that may fully cover the costs of the services.

Join the ESA Heritage Missions Virtual Lab today and take advantage of this exceptional opportunity.

To register, simply follow the provided instructions and forms to request the service. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@earthconsole.eu with support@earthconsole.eu in cc.

Stay tuned for updates and the upcoming not-to-be-missed invitation to propose your processor to be integrated into the Lab!

 

This is a project supported by the ESA Network of Resources initiative.

Banner including two pictures: one of polar ices and the other one of a coast

EarthConsole® selected as service provider for two OCRE funded research projects

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EarthConsole® by Progressive Systems was chosen as the preferred service provider for two research projects awarded through the OCRE (Open Clouds for Research Environments) call for funding Earth Observation services. These projects required extensive processing campaigns for different objectives using processors from the SARvatore (SAR Versatile Altimetric TOolkit for Research & Exploitation) family of processors. These processors were integrated by Progressive Systems into the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab on the EarthConsole® platform in 2021, following the previous ten-year experience as RSS G-POD operator at the European Space Agency.

With this long-term processing heritage, EarthConsole® was the clear choice for the research institutions leading the projects. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the details of these exciting projects and how EarthConsole® plans to contribute to their success.

The supported projects

Project: CryoSSARinSAM+
Research Institution: Technical University of Denmark – DTU SPACE (Denmark)

The Polar regions are important to study for a number of reasons. In an era of climate change, melting ice is expected to accelerate sea level change. In the past, various research groups have processed the first 9 years (2010.07-2020) of Cryosat radar altimetry for the Polar Oceans independently, using EarthConsole® or using the G-POD On Demand platform computing services. To continue this vital timeseries up through 2023 and also extend the Polar regions coverage to all regions outside the 50 degree parallel, this project was established.

CryoSSARinSAM+ aims at developing a common processing chain configuration to produce a single, open-access CryoSat-2 altimetry mission dataset that can support radar altimetry research of the polar oceans (both for the northern and southern hemisphere).

This dataset will have a wide range of potential applications, such as studying sea level, circulation, and trends in ice-covered polar seas; improving algorithms to monitor coastal sea level; estimating the thickness of summer sea ice; measuring significant wave height in polar oceans; and enhancing measurements of winter sea ice thickness in the Arctic and Antarctic, among other.

We want this dataset to become a reference standard for the radar altimetry research community, playing a pivotal role in advancing our knowledge of the polar oceans and ice cover, and the impact of climate change on them. A number of research institutions have been onboard designing this study and will directly ingest these data in their ongoing research

Ole B. Andersen
Professor, Department of Space Research and Technology
Geodesy and Earth Observation
DTU SPACE

Project: Assessment of renewable wave energy resources in the coastal zone using high-resolution altimetry products
Research Institution: CENTEC (Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering), Instituto Superior Tecnico , (Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento) – IST-ID, (Portugal)

The project’s primary objective is to evaluate the potential of wave renewable energy sources in the Atlantic Ocean, with a particular emphasis on the coastal region, where the energy can be efficiently harnessed. To achieve this objective, the project is processing the whole CryoSat, Sentinel-3A, and Sentinel-3B missions data over specific coastal zones and using an improved geophysical retrieval algorithm: SAMOSA+ (Dinardo et al. 2018, Dinardo 2020).

The datasets generated through this project are expected to have a multitude of applications, ranging from evaluating renewable energy sources to gaining a better understanding of the impact of waves on the rise of sea levels. We want this project to benefit the whole altimetry research community, this is why the findings will be shared as we complete the project

Sonia Ponce de Leon A.
Assistant Researcher
CENTEC-IST-University of Lisbon

 

Why EarthConsole®

EarthConsole® has been selected as the optimal service provider to perform the processing activities requested by the projects.

With the ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab (AVL) hosted on the platform, EarthConsole® provides the necessary services and solutions to cater to the specific needs of the altimetry research community.

The ESA Altimetry Virtual Lab is hosting SARvatore for CryoSat-2, SARINvatore for CryoSat-2, and SARvatore for Sentinel-3 processors, among others. These processors will be used to reprocess CryoSat-2 altimetry mission data (CryoSSARinSAM+) and Sentinel-3A & Sentinel-3B data (Assessment of renewable wave energy resources in the coastal zone using high-resolution altimetry products) on specific areas and periods of interests indicated by the research institutions.

EarthConsole® utilizes flexible computing resources such as Worker Nodes, CPU, and RAM, in combination with a quick access to data on a Copernicus DIAS infrastructure. This minimises the impact of data transfer on processing time, enabling scalable processing campaigns to be completed within the projects’ time constraints.

In addition, EarthConsole® experts will oversee all processing activities, freeing up researchers from the task of managing the processing campaign and IT infrastructure, allowing them to focus on their research goals.

In conclusion, EarthConsole® has once again demonstrated its commitment to providing innovative solutions that add value to altimetry research. With the needed processors, flexible computing resources, the quick access to the Copernicus datasets, and the right expertise, researchers can confidently pursue their research objectives, knowing that they have a reliable partner to support their efforts.

 

The EarthConsole® Virtual Lab for the Altimetry community

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The EarthConsole® Altimetry Virtual Lab, funded by ESA, aims at providing a virtual space to:

  • Support the Altimetry community in the development & operation of new Earth Observation applications;
  • Foster collaboration by leveraging on knowledge-sharing tools.

The Altimetry Virtual Lab has been developed on the new EarthConsole® platform and hosts the SARvatore (SAR Versatile Altimetric TOolkit for Research & Exploitation) family of processors which was previously available in the ESA Grid Processing On-Demand (G-POD) environment. The Altimetry Virtual Lab ensures service continuity following the recent termination of the G-POD environment.

The driving concept is to offer the same processing capabilities formerly available in ESA G-POD while improving the user experience by combining:

  • The access to innovative, fully customizable, altimetry data processing services from a single environment at the push of a button;
  • The availability of a set of tools to network with colleagues, keep up with the latest news and publications on radar altimetry, and share results to avoid duplication of efforts;
  • The flexibility of a virtual space which can be further reshaped following the future emerging needs of the community.

In particular, Altimetry Virtual Lab users can:

  1. Request & access, through the G-BOX service, a virtual machine for algorithm development, testing and post-processing analysis. Each virtual machine also includes software for altimetry data analysis & visualization: BRAT (http://www.altimetry.info/toolbox/), Panoply (https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/) and Python;
  2. Request to access and process data with the following processors which have been integrated and are ready for use:
    • ALES+ SAR Retracker – developed by the Technical University of Munich,
    • FF-SAR (Fully Focused SAR) for CryoSat-2 – developed by Aresys srl,
    • SARINvatore for CS-2, SARvatore for CS-2, SARvatore for S3 – developed by the ESA-ESRIN Altimetry Team
    • TUDaBO SAR-RDSAR – developed by the University of Bonn.
      All processors can be requested for both bulk (P-PRO service) or on-demand (P-PRO ON DEMAND service) processing;
  3. Request to integrate, through the I-APP service, additional processors;
  4. Access a set of tools to network and share information and results with colleagues: a forum, a datasets repository, and a knowledge-base with relevant altimetry publications and media for consultation;

Jérôme Benveniste, the initiator and coordinator of the GPOD/SARvatore service and its migration to the EarthConsole®, commented:

The GPOD/SARvatore Altimetry processing on-demand tool has been a great success fostering more than 25 peer-reviewed publications, 3 PhD thesis and tens of presentations to conferences in the past six years. Thanks to this SARvatore Family framework supported by ESA, several new and innovative altimetry retrackers were developed going beyond the standard Ground Segment algorithms, some by ESA, some donated by users, and were made accessible to worldwide Altimetry users, for breakthrough research in the oceanic coastal zone, inland water and the cryosphere domains. It was clear to ESA that, albeit the obsolescence of the GPOD, this adventure had to be continued and supported. I wish great success to the new EarthConsole® Altimetry Virtual Lab environment, which I’m sure will be a change of gears in efficiency and attractiveness to users.

The Altimetry Virtual Lab intends to lead the way for further virtual labs dedicated to other Earth observation communities and foster interdisciplinarity among them to advance collaboratively in the Earth observation sector.

Access to the Altimetry Virtual Lab web site is free of charge . If you are a former SARvatore G-POD data user or an altimetry data user, please visit this page for detailed instructions to join the EarthConsole® Altimetry Virtual Lab.

All the Altimetry Virtual Lab services are available via the ESA EO Network of Resources initiative. Users with a research, development, pre-commercial, or educational project, may be eligible to apply for an ESA sponsorship and receive a voucher to access these services free of charge or at very competitive prices.

Any request for information related to the Altimetry Virtual Lab should be sent to info@earthconsole.eu with support@earthconsole.eu and altimetry.info@esa.int in cc.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Lab!