• Egyptian Space Agency has an EO satellite to its fleet, Horus-1, built and launched under strategic cooperation between Egypt and China

• EUMETSAT expert on the significance of satellites for flood and drought monitoring (interview)

• Guyana Ministry of Natural Resources has signed a three-year contract with Maxar to provide imagery and insights for environmental monitoring;

• IRISS, the EU’s forthcoming satellite communications constellation, will soon compliment Galileo and Copernicus by providing independent, secure, resilient, cost-effective and seamless communication services. Read more in this article by Space.com.

• NATO is launching a new initiative to streamline the process of gathering, disseminating, and distributing satellite data for use by its members;

• The Canadian Space Agency awarded ten contracts worth $6.8M to five different companies in the country for EO-related R&D projects.

The Strategic Roadmap developed under the FIREFORUM project reflects the research and innovation strategy, with the EC and Member State funding agencies in mind as the prime audience. Download the pdf version of the road map for the following sectors

AGRICULTURE	INFRASTRUCTURE	MARINE & MARITIME	RAW MATERIALS	URBAN DEVELOPMENT	WIND ENERGY

• Criticism: use of Earth observation data in reporting forest levels for the Global Stocktake process (paper)
• EO company BlackSky has discovered details about China’s secret naval base in Cambodia using data from their satellites

• ESA released this video on the state of the ozone layer, its recovery and the role of satellites in monitoring it, including ESA’s upcoming Altius mission

• Hyperspectral imagery (+ more) from the first satellites of Pixxel

• First large-scale Saharan dust transport of 2023 was recorded in mid-February. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS*) has been monitoring the situation with forecasts predicting an episode of long-range Saharan dust transport across the Iberian Peninsula and France towards northern and central Europe.

• The International Energy Agency published bad news about the state of methane emissions in 2022 with the Methane Tracker database, which integrates satellite measurements from EO companies, GHGSat and Kayrros;

• water is measured from space (piece)

• Microsoft announces Azure Orbital Space Software Development Kit, software tools to make it easy for developers to create space applications in the cloud and deploy them on spacecraft operated by Azure Orbital partners - Ball Aerospace, Loft Orbital, Thales Alenia Space and Xplore

• Near Space Labs will provide imagery from their stratospheric balloons to property risk insurtech firm Tensorflight.

• Small satellite integrator, Open Cosmos will be launching a multimodal satellite with IoT-EO sensors later this year for the Andalusian (Spain) state

• Thermal infrared startup, ConstellR signed a multi-launch contract with launch service provider ExoLaunch for launch of their satellites in 2024

• Space-as-a-service company, Sidus Space has partnered with edge computing startup Exo-Space to provide edge AI capabilities into its planned satellite constellation;

• World Meteorological Organization will be running an Uncrewed Aircraft Systems to evaluate the use of drones for filling in atmospheric gaps in weather forecasting and monitoring;

• Airbus Defence and Space won a contract from Angola for their first Earth observation satellite, continuing the trend of sovereign EO globally

• EarthDaily Analytics was awarded a $1M Canadian Space Agency to enable analytics-ready thermal detection calibration and processing;

• Maxar was awarded a contract by the US Army worth ‘tens of millions of dollars’ to provide geospatial data to construct 3D virtual models of Earth

• Satellite IoT company, Astrocast was selected by Swiss Polar Institute to provide connectivity for for remote snow, glacier, and permafrost monitoring stations in Central Asia

• TCarta expands role in Seabed 2030 Ocean Survey Project

• Belgian Earth Observation Day 2023

• Indo-Pacific GeoIntelligence 2023
• online event from Geoawesomeness on EO for deforestation regulation.

• 2nd ISDE International Lectures with the theme of "The Digital Earth(s) of Citizens"

• 13th International Symposia on Digital Earth will be held from 11th to 14th July, 2023 in Athens, Greece.

• CASSINI Business Accelerator will be a six month space tech programme offering top-level business & investment coaching, training and seed funding to improve startup and scaleup companies’ ability to achieve sustained commercial growth in upstream and downstream space applications.

• Connecting Land and Sea for Global Awareness: The OGC Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure Pilot 2023 Calls For Participation
• That’s how many open procurement opportunities are currently available on the EUSPA website.

List of capdev meetings at CEOS

• course on the applications of SAR data, by a SAR expert;
• ROAD MAP for the sector