Latest Spot Stories

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched its Vega rocket on May 7 carrying multiple payloads. The launch was meant to demonstrate the versatility of the agency’s VESPA multiple launch adapter. After last week’s early morning lift-off, Vega deployed three spacecraft into orbit: Estonia’s ESTCube-1, Vietnam’s VNREDSat-1 and the prime payload Proba-V. ESA’s Proba-V, a next-generation "Earth Watcher" designed to...

ESA ESA and NASA have joined forces to ensure that Sentinel-2 and the newly launched Landsat Data Continuity Mission offer compatible data products, thereby bringing greater benefits to users of images of Earth’s land and coastal zones. ESA is currently developing the two-satellite Sentinel-2 mission for Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative. With the first satellite slated for launch in 2014, this innovative mission is dedicated to supplying...

ESA [ Watch The Video ] The French Spot satellites have been charting the world’s vegetation since 1998. This important task soon falls to ESA’s Proba-V, which, despite being only a little larger than a washing machine, will provide sharp views of Earth’s plant life every two days. Keeping a close check on the health of vegetation is not only essential for monitoring environmental change, but also for numerous practical applications – importantly, those related to agriculture...

Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com The European Space Agency (ESA) lost contact with its flagship Earth observing satellite almost two weeks ago, but the space agency hasn't skipped a beat in trying to make contact with Envisat. The recovery team at ESA is using every source available to try and determine if Envisat has entered its "safe mode."  This mode sees that the satellite placed its solar panels in a position so that it can draw power from the Sun. ESA said on Friday that valuable...

LAKE MARY, Fla., Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- In a pediatric practice dedicated to providing families with a unique and caring environment, Middleton Pediatrics is one of the first pediatric practices in Orlando using the Spot vision screener to assess their young patients vision. This revolutionary vision screening device, created by PediaVision, is able to capture important vision data in one second or less. "The parents of our patients belong to a generation that...

[ Watch the Video ] Images of some of our planet’s most beautiful features can be seen from the comfort of your Air France aircraft thanks to satellites. Clouds can’t obstruct these views: the crystal waters of the Andaman Islands while en route to Singapore, the snaking Senegal River after taking off from Dakar and the rolling dunes of the Gobi Desert before landing in Beijing. Satellite photos of the landscape below the aircraft are now accessible by passengers on dozens of Air...

SSTL has today announced that it will launch the NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X satellites on behalf of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) by a Dnepr launch vehicle from Yasny, Russia on October 29th, 2010.NigeriaSat-2 is the most advanced small satellite ever to be launched, defining new standards in Earth observation and avionics. The spacecraft, which is based upon SSTL's flagship SSTL-300i platform, will be used primarily for resource management and mapping of the...

The small but powerful camera of ESA's Proba-V mission can fit on a single laboratory table for testing. But when it reaches orbit, this compact sensor will deliver a daily overview of virtually all vegetation growth across Earth.Daily global monitoring is an ambitious enough goal for a full-sized mission, but Proba is ESA's smallest satellite platform "“ smaller than a cubic meter.The aim is to have a microsatellite doing an equivalent job to the wide-swath "˜Vegetation' camera on...

As rescue workers scramble to provide assistance to hundreds of thousands of people following Haiti's earthquake, Earth observation satellite data continues to provide updated views of the situation on the ground.Following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, international agencies requested satellite data of the area from the International Charter on 'Space and Major Disasters'.The Charter, an international initiative aimed at providing satellite data free of charge to...

Manuka honey may kill bacteria by destroying key bacterial proteins. Dr Rowena Jenkins and colleagues from the University of Wales Institute - Cardiff investigated the mechanisms of manuka honey action and found that its anti-bacterial properties were not due solely to the sugars present in the honey. The work was presented this week (7-10 September), at the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.Meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was...