Fabio Covello

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.

Status, results, potentiality and evolution of COSMO-SkyMed, the Italian Earth Observation constellation for risk management and security

COSMO-SkyMed is a Dual-Use program, devoted to produce both civilian and military applications, and as such it is required to have a fast response time, to manage conflicts and to optimize resources.

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 Seconda Generazione key improvements to respond to the user community needs

COSMO-SkyMed di Seconda Generazione (COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation - CSG) is the follow-on of the dual-use COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) mission, aimed at providing operational continuity with increased performance, flexibility and ability to respond to updated civilian and defence user needs. The definition and design of the second generation mission has capitalized all the major operational lessons learnt from the exploitation of the first generation system. Users required an higher degree of flexibility in the use of satellite imaging resources. In response to these needs, the major enhancement at space segment level involves the imaging performances and the satellite agility while at ground level flexible, responsive and optimized planning strategies were identified, both for the management of priority request and of background periodic acquisitions. The aim of this paper is to provide, from a user perspective, the “overall picture” of the introduced innovations. A mapping of these enhanced functionalities with respect to the enabling technologies and area of improvement is provided.

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.

COSMO-SkyMed System Monitoring And Coordination Function (FMCS)

In this paper it will be provided a description of the System Monitoring and Coordination Function (FMCS) that has been designed and developed in the frame of COSMO SkyMed project with the aim of control the Quality of Service provided and support the decision making process during the operation of the system.

Use of COSMO-SkyMed constellation for monitoring the post-fire vegetation regrowth: The Capo Figari case study

The use of COSMO-SkyMed constellation has been tested for post-fire monitoring activities. A typical Mediterranean ecosystem, seriously damaged by a wildfire, has been selected as study area. The multitemporal and multipolarization capabilities of COSMO-SkyMed have been exploited for automatic burnt area detection and monitoring of vegetation regrowth. Different imaging configurations have been tested to define the proper monitoring strategy in Mediterranean areas. Results showed X-band suitability for Mediterranean maquis post-fire monitoring.

COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation Planner

COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) system has been conceived, according to Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Italian Ministry of Defence (It-MoD) requirements, at the twofold objective of ensuring operational continuity to the current constellation (COSMO-SkyMed - CSK), while improving functionality and performances. It is an “end-to-end” Italian Earth Observation Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) Space System with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) operating in X-Band. CSG mission planning purpose is to fully employ the system resources, shared between partners with very different needs, producing a mission plan that satisfies the higher priority requests and optimizes the overall plan with the remaining requests according to the users programming rights consumption. CSG Mission Planning tool provides new performances in terms of adaptability and flexibility of the planning and scheduling algorithms conceived to select and synchronize data acquisition and downloading activities. CSG planning and scheduling problem is characterized by a large size of research space and a particular structure of technical and managerial constraints that has led to the implementation of innovative design of the planning algorithms based on both priority criteria and saturation of system resources. This approach envisages two scheduling strategies: the rank-based and the optimization-based. The former strategy is firstly applied to the most important request categories, with an associated rank value or priority level; the latter is subsequently applied to the unranked or lower priority requests. This is an iterative dynamic process of finding optimal solutions able to better answer the demanding requirements coming from the needs of heterogeneous users.