Gepubliceerd op 6 december 2019
At GEO Week 2019, Ms. Sasaki, Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan announced that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be providing open access to information and data from a suite of their radar satellites.
“Japan will provide free and open access to the wide-swathe observation data from the L-band radar satellites, such as ALOS (ALOS/AVINIR-2, PALSAR) and ALOS-2 (ALOS-2/ScanSAR),” stated Ms. Sasaki.
This data is key, particularly in the tropics, where cloud cover hinders optical sensor observation. In addition, radar satellites provide data for historical time series for various decision-making purposes.
Since the 1990’s, Japan has published long-term archived data from other Earth observation satellites, such as GCOM-W observing Water Cycle, GCOM-C observing atmosphere, terrestrial and ocean, and GPM observing precipitation. This data is essential for the GEO community and beyond, and contributes to broad range of societal benefits.