Alessandro Coletta

COSMO-SkyMed mission status: Three out of four satellites in orbit

COSMO-SkyMed is a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) end-to-end Earth Observation System aimed at establishing a global service supplying provision of data, products and services relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk Management, Scientific and Commercial Applications and Defence Applications. The system consists of a constellation of four LEO mid-sized satellites, each equipped with a multimode high-resolution SAR operating at X-band. Three out of four COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been successfully launched, while the remaining satellite will be deployed within 2010. COSMO-1 and COSMO-2 completed their Commissioning phase to test, verify and qualify the overall System and from the 1st of August both satellites are in the operational phase. The third satellite is performing its commissioning and it is expected to enter in operation in the second half of 2009. In this paper will be presented the current status of the mission and future objectives.

The COSMO-SkyMed Dual Use Earth Observation Program: Development, Qualification, and Results of the Commissioning of the Overall Constellation

COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) is the largest Italian investment in Space Systems for Earth Observation, commissioned and funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Italian Ministry of Defense (It-MoD). The CSK constellation has been completely qualified in orbit since 2010 and it is still operating at full performance with a constellation of four mid-sized satellites placed in Low Earth Orbit, each carrying a high-resolution X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and a full-featured Ground Segment to exploit observation capabilities and providing SAR imaging servicing worldwide. The primary mission objective of CSK is the provision of services able to quickly answer to the user needs in the domains of Monitoring of land and environmental resources, Strategic Surveillance for Defense and Intelligence, Maritime Control, Topography, and Commercial applications as well. CSK fulfills civilian and defense needs, enhancing international partnerships through its interoperability, expandability, and multisensor (IEM) features and practices. Thanks to these features, CSK is an asset for international partnership such as the Italian-Argentinean Satellite System for Emergency Management (SIASGE). This paper intends to delineate how those fundamental characteristics of CSK have been qualified and commissioned from the launch of the first CSK satellite in 2007 through its progressive deployment until the system in-flight final acceptance (S-IFAR) event in 2010 that has completed the orbiting four-satellite qualified configuration. Nowadays, CSK is operating at full performance, constituting an asset for its firstclass radar observation capabilities, state-of-the-art technology aimed at improving security of countries, safety, and life quality of their citizens.

Interferometric Missions: Applications within ASI Space Programs

The Italian Space Agency (ASI), together with Ministry of Defence (I-AD), is involved in the realization of the COSMO-Skymed program that foresees the deployment of a constellation of 4 SAR satellites in Low Earth Orbit, dedicated to the management, control and exploitation of Earth resources for civilian and defence applications. ASI is responsible for the definition, implementation and management of the Program, while Alcatel Alenia Space Italia is the Prime Contractor responsible for the design, development and verification of the entire system. The nominal phasing of the satellites on the orbit plane has been selected in order to achieve the optimisation of the performance in terms of accessibility and revisit time w.r.t. the number of satellites. Moreover COSMO-SkyMed system is able to perform interferometric acquisitions, which yield three dimensional images and/or provide various information on land conformation change, subsidence, land-slides and so on. Then, periodically, one of the four satellites will be moved to a fixed distance with respect to another for reaching the interferometric configuration. In order to increase the operating capacity of the COSMO-Skymed system, ASI intends to start the definition of a complementary civilian program with the purpose of covering bi-static and across-track/along-across interferometry applications. Such a mission will be referred as “SABRINA”, acronym of “System for Advanced Bistatic and Radar INterferometry Applications”, based on the use of a “passive” satellite (“BISSAT”, acronym for “Bistatic and Interferometric SAR SATellite”). This satellite will fly in formation with COSMO-Skymed and then a suitable strategy shall be determined for reaching and maintaining the interferometric configuration.

COSMO-SkyMed mission status: Results, lessons learnt and evolutions

In 2003, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), supported by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) and the Ministry of Defense (It-MoD), commissioned and funded the COSMO-SkyMed (COnstellation of small Satellites for the Mediterranean basin Observation) mission, an Earth Observation Dual Use System (civil and military) for the monitoring of Resources, Natural Disasters and National Security. COSMO-SkyMed system, which represents the Italian biggest investment in the Earth Observation (EO) field, was realized by TAS-I (Thales Alenia Space Italy) as the industrial prime contractor for the Space Segment, and Telespazio as prime contractor for the Ground Segment, logistic and operations. For what concern the commercial distribution of COSMO-SkyMed products, ASI and Telespazio have constituted the e-GEOS company.

One-day interferometry results with the COSMO-SkyMed constellation

COSMO-SkyMed is a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) End-to-End Earth Observation System aimed at establishing a global service supplying provision of data, products and services relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk Management, Scientific and Commercial Applications and Defence Applications. The system consists of a constellation of four LEO mid-sized satellites, each equipped with a multi-mode high-resolution SAR operating at X-band. Three out of four COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been successfully launched, while the remaining satellite will be deployed within 2010. The first two satellites have been launched in 2007 while COSMO-SkyMed-3 has been launched on October 25th 2008. Since its launch COSMO-SkyMed-3 has been put in an orbital position at 67,5° from COSMO-SkyMed-2, in the so-called “one-day interferometry configuration”. Since then COSMO-SkyMed-2 and COSMO-SkyMed-3 are providing a interferometric pairs for a wide range of applications.

The COSMO-SkyMed support to earthquake events

The frequency and impact of natural disasters worldwide is constantly highlighting the need for quick and appropriate decisions from civil protection, always supported by the increasing availability of higher resolution, better accuracy, better revisit and response time data. With COSMO-SkyMed Italy has offered, and still offers today, an efficient response to actual needs of environment management during a high number of real emergency events, such as earthquakes. COSMO-SkyMed (Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean basin observation) is the largest investment of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) for Earth Observation (EO), completely commissioned and funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Defense. It is a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defense) system aimed at establishing a global service supplying provision of data and services relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk and Emergency Management. The COSMO-SkyMed constellation is providing a significant contribution to Emergency Management providing timely and accurate radar images used in a wide variety of applications such as earthquake damage assessment. In this paper the analysis related to the application of COSMO-SkyMed data supporting emergency response operations in case of earthquakes as well as the description of some real use cases occurred in the last years will be presented.

COSMO-SkyMed mission: Lessons learnt and future improvements on user services

COSMO-SkyMed is an Italian Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) Earth Observation Space System composed of four satellites with an X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). It is conceived for global environmental monitoring, scientific and commercial purposes and strategic applications (Defence and National Security). During the last years, thanks to a continuous monitoring of user feedbacks, some aspects of the interface between COSMO-SkyMed System and external users have been identified to be improved. New services and new tools are intended to be introduced in order to make the interface more efficient. In this paper an overview of these new services will be shown, mainly concern with the Customer Service activities and the data utilization by civilian users.

Sea surface transport derived by frequent revisit time series of COSMO SkyMed SAR data

The surface transport of ‘SAR detectable’ features on sea is accurately estimated by couples of overlapping COSMO SkyMed ScanSAR images acquired with a very short time lag (below the hour). Tests performed with the two satellites constellation during 2008 (4 operative by 2010) provided pairs of overlapping images with a time shift of 48 minutes and with a repeat time from 12 to 24h. The short time lag acquisition has two advantages: the first is that the pair of overlapping images is a sort of time derivative from which an accurate estimate of the surface transport can be extracted, the second is that the deformation of the ‘tracked features’ in the short time interval is minimal and a large number of objects can be tracked, even with the only automated processing. The sea surface transport is a crucial data in case of marine emergencies and the accurate estimate greatly improves the surveillance and the forecasting capability. Overlapping and short time lagged SAR imagery provide surface transport data of detectable objects with all-weather conditions.

ASI COSMO-SkyMed: Mission Overview and Data Exploitation

Spring 2014 signs the beginning of the fourth operational year of the complete Italian four-satellite dualuse system COSMO-SkyMed (COnstellation of small Satellites for the Mediterranean basin Observation). The constellation was stepwise deployed in the time range 2007-2010, starting with the launch of the first satellite in June 2007 and completing the system with the last one in November 2010.

COSMO-SkyMed mission: risk management applications over China, Myanmar and Haiti conducted during 2008

Between 2007 and 2008, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) and Ministero della Difesa (Italian Ministry of Defence) launched three out of the four X-band SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites of the Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean Basin Observation (COSMO-SkyMed) dual-use (civilian and defence) mission, dedicated to Earth observation. The results received from the utilization of the two operative satellites of the constellation reveal the significant achievement of the X-band SAR sensor and the importance of a fast response time in risk management applications. This article presents the qualitative analyses and results related to a set of risk management applications of the year 2008 by ASI and e-GEOS pertaining to China, Myanmar and Haiti.