Nebula Public Library

Visualisation is the bridge between the quantitative information hidden in the data and the human intuition and understanding; it is a challenge of key importance in the present ?Big Data? era. In all three segments of the Space Safety Programme (S2P) large amounts of data are produced daily. Adequate visualisation can lead to more effective analysis of diverse aspects and increase knowledge about the unfolding of different phenomena. For example, the main current means of visualisation of Space Weather phenomena used by scientists and operators are 2D and in few cases 3D graphs.

Over the last decades, the spaceborne remote sensing community has been focused on the development of imaging radars at RF frequencies such as S-band, L-band, C-band and X-band.

ITU regulations currently permit the use of Ka-band for active spaceborne microwave remote sensing but only few missions are considering applying this frequency band such as the SARAL mission with the ALtiKa instrument (launched 2013).

Optical satellite communications play an increasingly important role in a number of space applications. However, if the system concept includes optical links to the surface of Earth, the limited availability due to clouds and other atmospheric impacts need to be considered to give a reliable estimate of the system performance. An OGS network is required for increasing the availability to acceptable figures.