As the newly elected chair of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, the CSIR Satellite Applications Centre has committed to delivering remote sensing data from the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) programme at no cost to all African countries 5° south of the equator.
(l to r) Alex Fortescue, Asanda Ntisana and Wabile Motswasele All representing of the CEOS CHAIR 2008, Dr. Barbara Ryan CEOS Chair 2007, Mary Kicza and Brent Smith both representing CEOS SIT Chair 2008, and Matlou Mabokano of Department of Science and Technology GEO.
This follows a decision announced at the GEO Summit in Cape Town by the CBERS programme to supply images free to their neighbouring countries. And falls in line with the adoption of policies within Brazil and China to distribute CBERS images free to all within respective countries.
Dubbed the 'special project' of the incoming CEOS chair, availability of CBERS images to African countries has been made possible through the willingness of partners China through CRESDA and Brazil through INPE to waive fees for the downlink system as well as the access fee.
This leaves the CSIR free to disseminate country coverage to all the African countries that fall within its footprint. These include: Angola; Botswana; DRC; Lesotho; Madagascar; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; South Africa; Swaziland; Tanzania; Zambia; and Zimbabwe.
As one of the ground stations identified for CBERS direct reception and onward distribution, the CSIR aims to deliver on both its promise and the actual deliverable of useable backdrop imagery.
The CSIR has negotiated to use spare capacity on Eumetsat’s (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) GEONETCAST which will allow easy downlink over Africa through geostationary communication satellites. This makes it possible for CSIR to deliver images to anyone within their footprint.
In theory, anyone with an affordable pc card in a computer and a TV aerial.can receive these images. This could be a school in Malawi or a government department in Angola. Use of the images ranges from capacity building to their use for the monitoring of natural disasters and land cover changes as a result of drought, desertification and deforestation. Other applications may include the use of such images in the mitigation of threats to agricultural production and to public health.
CBERS-2B, launched in September 2007, orbits sun-synchronously at an altitude of 778 km, with 14 revolutions a day to achieve complete coverage of the earth in 26 days. It consists of a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, an infrared multispectral scanner (IRMSS) camera, a wide-field imager (WFI) camera and a transponder for the Brazilian environmental data collection system.
Enhancements to CBERS-2B are the replacement of the IRMSS camera with a high-resolution panchromatic camera (HRC), and the new on-board recording system and advanced positioning system, which includes GPS (Global Positioning System) and star sensor.
The CBERS programme commenced in 1988 and is run by the Chinese Academy of Space Technology and Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. The programme has launched three satellites to date, with two more in the pipeline.
Contact Biffy van Rooyen, CSIR Communications,
Tel 012 841-3887, bvrooyen@csir.co.za