Nebula Public Library

The approach of the ‘Interplanetary Meteoroid Environment for eXploration’ (IMEX) project is to build a model of meteoroid streams throughout the inner solar system. Our motivation for this model is the impact hazard to spacecraft. An understanding of the interplanetary environment, including the dust environment, is crucial for the planning of spacecraft missions in the inner solar system. Particles striking a spacecraft with high velocities can cause damage leading to the impairment or even failure of the spacecraft or its subsystems.

Biomass burning is a key Earth system process, a major element of the terrestrial carbon cycle and a globally highly significant source of certain atmospheric trace gases and (primarily fine mode) aerosols. Natural and anthropogenic biomass burning occurs on all continents except Antarctica, with an estimated average of 3.5 - 4.5 million km2 of vegetation burnt in global wildfires each year (though this does not include the very large numbers of "small" agricultural fires that are difficult to map using current coarse spatial resolution remote sensing datasets).

Ocean Surface Current is one of the most important ocean properties for oceanographers and operators in the maritime domain. Improved monitoring of ocean currents is systematically the number one requirement that emerges from any science or end user requirement surveys. Wavemill is a novel hybrid interferometric SAR system first proposed by ESA/ESTEC [Buck, 2005]. It offers the possibility of generating two-dimensional wide swath, high resolution, high precision maps of surface current vectors and ocean topography [Buck et al., 2009].

The SIROCCO study was performed under ESA guidance by a consortium led by NOVELTIS and including four partners: ULB (Belgium), IASB-BIRA (Belgium), SRON (Netherlands) and IAPS (Italy). The goal of the study was to review in a multidisciplinary context (Earth Observation and Planetary Science) the status of existing retrieval algorithms and to extend their capabilities when applied to remote sensing data collected (or to be collected in the near future) by instruments in orbit around the planets Earth and Mars, with atmospheric carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) as specific targets.