IKONOS Ground Segment Interoperability & Experiences after 6+ Years of Operations

Transcription

1 IKONOS Ground Segment Interoperability & Experiences after 6+ Years of Operations George Ellis, European Space Imaging GSCB Workshop, ESA/ESRIN Frascati

2 IKONOS Mission status Launch Owned by Operational life Orbit Number of revolutions Orbit time Altitude Image swath Equator crossing time Revisit time Dynamic range 24 September 1999 Vandenberg Air Force Base, California GeoEye, USA All systems are still nominal, so currently estimated until after , near-polar, sun-synchronous 14.7 every 24 hours 98 minutes 681 km 11.3 km at nadir 13.8 km at 26 off-nadir 10:30 a.m. solar time 3 days at 1 meter resolution, 40 latitude 11 bits per pixel

3 European Space Imaging based in Munich, Germany EUSI & SIME Company set-up founded in 2002 to directly service the European market and fullfill European needs for ME data Owns Ikonos European Ground Station for Direct Tasking and Data Processing Space Imaging Middle East established Dec 97 in Dubai, UAE Landsat & IRS downlink 1st Regional Affiliate of Space Imaging (Nov 99) IKONOS reception and distribution since Jan 00 Aerial photography & processing since Mar 04 Direct access to IKONOS through 2 local ground stations (Munich and Abu Dhabi) Same day delivery of archive and new data from Europe and the Middle East

4 IKONOS Communication Cones (EU/ME) 2,400 km radius 18 million km² covered 6+ million km² data in EUSI archive Satellite Access daily, 10:30-13:30 local time 4 to 6 combined imaging windows/accesses per day Revisit time 1-meter access every 1-3 days (2-meter access daily)

5 Image products Data acquisitions simultaneous and fully co-registered; mono or stereo Image products can be ordered as: Black and White cm Multispectral 3.2 m 4.0 m (R, G, B, NIR) True color False color 4 separate bands Bundle (= B/W & MS) Pan-sharpened True color False color 4 separate bands Distribution via CD DVD Hard Disk FTP 18th 19th June 2009

6 Single shots Flexible Collection Units Multiple & long strips up to several thousand km long multiple strips next to each other Arbitrary alignment North-South East-West Diagonal

7 GEROC - German Regional Operations Center

8 Elements of the Ground Station Customer Service Center (CSC) Provides customer interface: Catalog query Order entry Order status Coordinates flow of the Product order through the ground station Distributes image products to internal and external customers System Control and Tasking (SCT) Performs feasibility analysis Plans imagery collection Generates tasking Primary interface with the satellite Processes raw metadata creating Image Support Data Communication & Image Processing (CIP) Controls the antenna Ingests/archives imagery and other data Generates image products Stores collateral data Each element is an important and integral part of the ground station. Each one not only performs functions particular to its individual role, but also interfaces with the other elements to create a unified ground station

9 Ground EO data flow Product Order Management (Customer Service Center) Name Acct. # Due Date GSD Feasibility Request Feasibility Report Product Order Request Automated Processing Mission Planning (System Control and Tasking) 24-hr Plan 5 Rev re-plans Ad-hoc tasks 6 Manual Processing Production (Comm. & Image Processing) ISD 12 Metadata 7 Collection plan Tasking commands Image Data Metadata 11 8 Tasking commands Image Data Metadata 9 10

10 EUSI is very lean, so development and implementation of the HMA interfaces have been sub-contracted to EOX IT Services of Vienna, Austria EOX is a spin-off of the Austrian research Center ARC The follwing 3 slides are presented on behalf of EOX HMA

11 EO Catalogue HMA Implementation Status metadata archive integrated into geo-aware RDBMS fully operational online Search & Browse based on ESA's EOLI Order and Delivery online Order operational (for Cat-1 users) based on ESA's EOLI Order and Delivery status tracking and management system for Cat-1 Users offline archive & asynch. processing semi-automatic delivery via FTP to User & ESA's MMMC/MMFI

12 HMA Implementation Development Catalogue update to CSW-ebRIM in the frame of GSC-DA project Order and Delivery update to support interfaces towards CDS and GSP's in the frame of GSC-DA project extend tracking to support reporting system ESA wants implement subscription support Reporting system automation to fulfil various GSC-DA reporting requirements

13 HMA Implementation - Comments Proposal for IKONOS integration into GSC- DA submitted to ESA Sep 08 technical feedback in progress EUSI / EOX can develop whatever ESA believes necessary for its purposes, but it is already a challenge now to stay within the budgetary limits for SW development Data delivery should be more pushed towards Webservices (WMS,WFS,WCS, )

14 Quality Assurance for Earth Observation (QA4EO) With IKONOS being in orbit since almost 10 years, and owned by a US company we can always kindly ask GeoEye to have a look at European QA guidelines for their long-running satellite operations

15 6+ Years Local Tasking of Ikonos weather influence using no weather forecast at all results in 30 % good 70 % bad images (= average cc over Europe) Schedule editing with real-time weather yields 80 % good 20 % bad images (= 1.6 x better compared to forecasts) human factor local tasking allows very carefull schedule editing (up to 3.5 hours spent per pass) short feedback lines between customers, sales, customer support, operations, TC (e.g. priorities, additional information, strategic decisions, additional forecasts etc.) collection capacity doubled compared to central tasking essential projects become feasible customer satisfaction generally very high

16 6+ Years Local Tasking of Ikonos Integrated information flow during schedule edit up to 0.5 hrs prior to pass: Scheduling options Real-time Pass weather plan Weather (*) for immediate forecast* and future collection opportunities Customer Customer Custome r Custom er

17 6+ Years Local Tasking of Ikonos So what makes the difference between a system that simply works and a system that works superbly? Dedicated and experienced operators

18 sites north and south omitted for simplification

19 nominal Image Regions (IR) as calculated by the Scheduler

20 1st edit step: eliminate 5th IR (that scan time can be better used on another target on that pass)

21 1st Scheduler run

22 2nd edit step: minimize IRs around AOI to bring up 3rd IR in the schedule

23 2nd edit step: minimize IRs around AOI to bring up 3rd IR in the schedule

24 2nd Scheduler run

25 3rd edit step: minimize 1 IR to bring up 4th IR in the schedule

26 3rd edit step: minimize 1 IR to bring up 4th IR in the schedule

27 3rd Scheduler run (trying to stretch IR further north resulted in IR dropping out of schedule again)

28 4th edit step: rotate IR to be able to stretch 4th IR to border of AOI

29 4th edit step: rotate IR to be able to stretch 4th IR to border of AOI

30 4th Scheduler run

31 5th edit step: stretch IR towards border of AOI

32 5th edit step: stretch IR towards border of AOI

33 5th Scheduler run 4th IR dropped out of the schedule again

34 6th edit step: shift all IR towards ground track in order to be able to stretch last IR to border of AOI

35 6th edit step: shift all IR towards ground track in order to be able to stretch last IR to border of AOI

36 6th Scheduler run 4th IR back in the schedule again

37 7th edit step: stretch last IR to border of AOI

38 7th edit step: stretch last IR to border of AOI

39 7th Scheduler run all 4 IR in the schedule, AOI covered

40 at all times the TC sees the real scan regions on the ground on top of the nominal IR (omitted in previous slides for simplification)

41 this way the real overlap between IR and the achieved coverage over the AOI can be controlled very accurately Effort to semi-manually expand the imaging over this target from less than 50 % coverage to full coverage on a single pass : 7 editing steps 7 scheduler runs less than 5 min Gained imaging area 1000 km 2

42 Implication analysis & recommendations For highly flexible systems like IKONOS standardisation can quickly become limitation: Don t force a taxi on railroad tracks and run it on a fixed schedule just because you have most experience with using trains Willingness of commercial, non-european satellite owners to adhere to European wishes and standards may be limited, esp. but not only if they should be applied to already existing missions Proper system design is crucial, the Human Factor is essential over-automation will move us away from the system optimum

43 Thank you