The Role of SmallSats in Scientific Exploration and Commercialization of Space

Over the past decade, SmallSats have been established as having great potential for science exploration and commercialization of space. The SmallSat revolution aims to decrease the cost of space development, making space exploration accessible to students, educators, and public citizens. These efforts have focused on miniaturization of instruments and space platforms, as well as reducing their cost, mass, and needed power. In addition to enabling scientific exploration, SmallSats provide affordable means for the public to purchase remote sensing and communication products on a global scale. SmallSat mission concepts are particularly powerful when they are deployed in distributed architecture or constellations. For example, the most promising observation techniques for global science measurements of the Earth system and space weather require multi-point distributed observations of the Earth system at a feasible cost. The high cost of access to space has long been a barrier, especially with the prohibitive cost of large satellites. Affordable SmallSat constellations can be game-changers, enabling scientific exploration as well as commercial global data products. In this paper, we highlight investments made by NASA to date (specifically a study in developing and prototyping a SmallSat platform with standard interfaces), along with several example mission concept scenarios in Earth and space science (astrophysics, heliophysics, and planetary) applications that can be achieved using this platform

Clouds-Aerosols-Precipitation Satellite Analysis Tool (CAPSAT)

International audienceA methodology for representing much of the physical information content of the METEOSAT Second Generation (MSG) geostationary satellite using red-green-blue (RGB) composites of the computed physical values of the picture elements is presented. The physical values are the solar reflectance in the solar channels and brightness temperature in the thermal channels. The main RGB compositions are (1) "Day Natural Colors", presenting vegetation in green, bare surface in brown, sea surface in black, water clouds as white, ice as magenta; (2) "Day Microphysical", presenting cloud microstructure using the solar reflectance component of the 3.9 ?m, visible and thermal IR channels; (3) "Night Microphysical", also presenting clouds microstructure using the brightness temperature differences between 10.8 and 3.9 ?m; (4) "Day and Night", using only thermal channels for presenting surface and cloud properties, desert dust and volcanic emissions; (5) "Air Mass", presenting mid and upper tropospheric features using thermal water vapor and ozone channels. The scientific basis for these rendering schemes is provided, with examples for the applications. The expanding use of these rendering schemes requires their proper documentation and setting as standards, which is the main objective of this publication

La 25ème Conférence des chefs d'état d'Afrique et de France. Nuova partnership, rinnovata Francafrique o/Sarkafrique? Il caso del Madagascar.

Il 17 marzo 2009 il Presidente della Repubblica del Madagascar Marc Ravalomanana rimette il potere nelle mani di un direttorio militare. Da questo momento le relazioni tra il Madagascar e gli altri paesi esclusa la Francia si deteriorano in modo tangibile. L’articolo alla luce di una rilettura di La 25 ème Conférence des Chefs d’État d’Afrique et de France si propone di esaminare le cause profonde, le manifestazioni, le ripercussioni di questa crisi e soprattutto se la Francia di Sarkozy nei suoi rapporti con l’Africa si è discostata dalla Francafrique o invece pur con qualche variante la stessa è divenuta Sarkafrique come la crisi malgascia fa intravedere. Nel caso particolare l’interesse della Francia verso il Madagascar e soprattutto politico data la sua posizione strategica nell’oceano Indiano cosa che giustifica il favore di Parigi nei giorni precedenti la caduta di Ravalomanana ed in quelli seguenti verso il nuovo uomo forte del Madagascar: Andry Rajoelin

Using MSG to monitor the evolution of severe convective storms over East Mediterranean Sea and Israel, and its response to aerosol loading

Convective storms over East Mediterranean sea and Israel were tracked by METEOSAT Second Generation (MSG). The MSG data was used to retrieve time series of the precipitation formation processes in the clouds, the temperature of onset of precipitation, and an indication to aerosol loading over the sea. Strong correlation was found between the aerosol loading and the depth above cloud base required for the initialization of effective precipitation processes (indicated by the effective radius = 15 µm threshold). It seems from the data presented here that the clouds' response to the aerosol loading is very short

The Distribution and economic importance of the Mangrove forests of Kenya

Volume: 7

Progress in satellite quantum key distribution

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a family of protocols for growing a private encryption key between two parties. Despite much progress, all ground-based QKD approaches have a distance limit due to atmospheric losses or in-fibre attenuation. These limitations make purely ground-based systems impractical for a global distribution network. However, the range of communication may be extended by employing satellites equipped with high-quality optical links. This manuscript summarizes research and development which is beginning to enable QKD with satellites. It includes a discussion of protocols, infrastructure, and the technical challenges involved with implementing such systems, as well as a top level summary of on-going satellite QKD initiatives around the world.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

Network Neutrality and Quality of Service: A two-sided market analysis

In this paper, we examine welfare implications of switching from a neutrality regime to a network management regime. While in the former a network provider or an integrated ISP should transmit data with a-bit-is-a-bit principle, in the latter it is allowed to differentiate its connection quality considering economic value of data packets transmitted from content or application providers to end-users. The differentiation indicates allowing the ISP to apply QoS arrangements for quality-sensitive contents or applications. The above issues are first examined with a model in which there is a monopolist ISP, and later it is extended through introducing duopoly competition. Our results refer some potential gains that can be captured through network management regime. Although the overall effect of deviation from neutrality regime on total surplus may not defined clearly, both in monopoly and in duopoly models we have found that end-users and quality-sensitive content or application providers benefit from network management regime, in case of enough increase in quality of connection offered by ISP(s).And, regular content or application providers suffer with decreasing connection quality because of fixed network capacity