December 2, a seminar on remote sensing of the Earth was held in NTUU “KPI”. It was dedicated to modern methods and perspectives for monitoring the Earth from space, that is, ensuring continuous reception from satellites complex data on the state of its natural resources, land use, the weather situation in certain regions and others.
Opening the seminar, the Rector of NTUU "KPI" NAS academician Michael Zgurovsky noted that the opportunity to share their vision for the development of space research, including in the field of remote sensing is for participants very useful, especially in the context of determining the role of universities in this process.
Remote sensing activities carried out for the benefit of the Earth and in the interests of all countries of the world, regardless of their economic, social, scientific and technological development. Therefore, the issues that were discussed at the seminar, are in sight of the governments of many countries, and therefore are addressed jointly. In particular, EU countries work actively with them. The main structure, which provides the organization of cooperation among scientists in the framework of European research programs, is the Joint Research Center, which is composed of seven different profiles of research institutions located in five different European countries. The purpose of their activity - to provide scientific assistance and support of the European Union and the European Commission. Of course, they use in their research methods of space monitoring of the Earth's surface. Moreover, European researchers are working in this direction very actively.
It is therefore with great interest the participants reacted to the report of the JRC representative Guido Lemoyne. He is the head of one of the European project, which is called MARS (Monitoring Agriculture with Remote Sensing). The aim of this project is to monitor agricultural activities by remote sensing. This work was started 25 years ago and it is an important source of information accessible to all, invaluable in the management of common agrarian policy and essential to ensure food security around the world. It allows predicting future harvests, to monitor the effectiveness of using agricultural soils and more. For this work, the European Commission spends approximately 8000000 euro. Information obtained from space, is the basis for the creation of digital maps of agricultural activities, growing crops, yield and more. These maps are made by each country of the European Union. Their presence, by the way, is one of the conditions for the acquisition of the country's membership in the EU.
According to Guido Lemoyne, project MARS - this is part of the program of the European Space Association of Copernicus. Powerful tool for implementing became the new European satellite, equipped with sensors for radar scanning the Earth Sentinel-1A, which was launched into space in April this year. Actually, this is only the first satellite of the environmental monitoring program Copernicus, which is designed for more than ten years. Next year the launch Sentinel-1B is planned, then there will be two satellites with optical-electronic equipment Sentinel-2 (A and B), and then - with two opto-electronic and radar equipment Sentinel-3, and finally - Sentinel-4 and Sentinel 5, intended primarily for monitoring atmospheric conditions. All these satellites will provide continuous regular flow of various data necessary for the protection of the environment and other information needs for sustainable development. Each new satellite in this series will provide an increasing amount of such information - from the current 1 TB / day, up to 4 TB / day. At the same time there is an opportunity to explore as the whole country, as well as their pre-defined area. These data are planned to receive up to 2025. However, the program space monitoring of the Earth will not be over: now the works are carried out on creating the next generation of satellites.
Responding to questions from the participants, Guido Lemoyne among other things said that since 2015 the number of areas covered by the European remote sensing satellites will include also Ukraine.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Space Research of NAS of Ukraine - Ukraine HCA Professor KPI Natalia Kussul told about the attraction Ukrainian research teams in international space projects and programs, the results of this cooperation, as well as the similarity of these activities to the program Guido Leiman deals with. An important area of activity of the Ukrainian researchers is the development of terrestrial technologies for processing data received from the satellites. She also noted that a major step in the development of space research was done by experts NTUU "KPI", who created and launched into orbit the first Ukrainian nanosatellite. And given the fact that now, in her words, European colleagues concentrated on satellites with average separation (about thirty meters), and lost sight of the nanosatellites with their high separation and significant opportunities, cooperation in this sector could be very interesting. She finished by saying: "I think that the themes provided by Guido Lemoyne, fit very well with what we have done here. The experts KPI has been created the platform of nanosatellites, and if we will put in PolyITAN-3, or PolyITAN-4 the possibility of remote sensing of the Earth, there will be a complete mobile recording the earth's surface and the development of high separation service from one to five meters, which is now missing in the projects of the European Commission. "
Specific extension of her speech was the report of the Director of the satellite monitoring of the State Space Agency of Ukraine Sergei Yancheuski on the activities of the agency in the field of remote sensing. He spoke about the implementation of such programs through the European Earth observation satellite system "Sich" on the basis of consistent development of space systems, opto-electronic surveillance average separation (projects "Sich-2" and "Sich-2M") obtained during the monitoring results and use, as well as the perspective work of domestic specialists in this direction.
One of the base in the Ukrainian space industry organizations is NTUU "KPI", as evidenced by the space launch the first national nanosatellite PolyITAN-1. Its development was carried out in the framework of the University space program. Vice Rector for Research NTUU “KPI”, NAS academician Mikhail Ilchenko in his speech described its goals, objectives, scientific and technical bases and. The program is implemented in five directions: the first - the development in the next five years a series of five nano-satellites; the second - ensuring the participation of the University in the creation of inter-university microsatellite, which is developed in three partner universities - KPI, Kharkov Aerospace University and Dnepropetrovsk National University; the third - the development and implementation of projects of satellite telecommunications; the fourth - participation in all-Ukrainian consortium with orbital servicing and the fifth - carrying out specific orders of domestic and foreign companies in the field of space research.
At the end of the workshop participants, and among them were scientists, professors and graduate students KPI working on space topics, exchanged views on closer cooperation with relevant research European structures.
Vice-Rector of the University for International Relations, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Sergei Sidorenko summarized the results of the meeting. He said that there is a need for a major international conference on space topics.The platform for its implementation could become the National Technical University of Ukraine "Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" with its long tradition in the field of space research, experience in organizing such international scientific activities and infrastructure, which is necessary for this purpose.