20 December 2006
ACRES is pleased to announce a major price reduction in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) products from the Earth Resource Satellite (ERS). Prices have been reduced from over $2000 down to $590 as a result of ACRES being granted greater pricing flexibility by the satellite operator. The reduced price will increase the attractiveness and utilisation of ERS SAR data to a wide range of users.
For a small fee, customers may also place requests for the ERS satellite to acquire data over a particular area in the future.
ERS SAR products have been available from ACRES since 1993. A major advantage of SAR data is its ability to image the Earth through cloud or at night. C-band SAR data is particularly useful in coastal and ocean environments where it has been successfully used in helping to identify oil seeps and slicks, and ship detection.
ACRES holds a large and comprehensive archive of ERS SAR data over Australia and New Zealand, including complete continental coverages from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 tandem mission undertaken for 9 months in 1995-96. During the tandem mission, the orbit configuration of ERS-1 and ERS-2 enabled global observations, one day apart, from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites. Data acquired during the period of the tandem mission is particularly suited for interferometric applications, including Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generation.
The ERS-1 and ERS-2 SAR data may also be used for time series studies with the currently available Envisat ASAR data.
14 December 2006
ACRES is presenting an opportunity to research agencies, universities and others to use ALOS data for developing applications. Research proposals that demonstrate the value of data from ALOS and meet the objectives of this AO are sought. Other remotely sensed data, such as Landsat and JERS SAR data, may also be provided on a case-by-case basis to support the AO research proposals. Applications close on Monday 12th February 2007.
Additional information about the ALOS mission and instruments
14 November 2006
ACRES is now accepting registration requests from users to have their proposed use of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) data approved as non-commercial. ACRES will be distributing ALOS data for non-commercial purposes only, so customers must first apply to ACRES to have their proposed use approved and registered as non-commercial
Before submitting their registration request, customers are advised to become familiar with the content of the new ALOS web pages. The ALOS Overview page describes the ordering procedure and provides other useful ALOS related links such as satellite characteristics, non-commercial use definition and processing options
At this stage ACRES is still performing final testing and validation of our new ALOS online ordering system through the ACRES Digital Catalogue. A separate announcement will be made when we are ready to start accepting orders. Customers who apply to register their proposed use as non-commercial will receive a reply to their request once the online ordering system becomes operational.
20 November 2006
The ACRES price for products from the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) will be $330 per scene for non-commercial purposes. Please see the ACRES ALOS Price List for more details. Customers will receive a discount of $22 for online delivery.
ACRES is licensed to distribute ALOS data in the Oceania region which includes Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and many Pacific Islands. Customers requiring data for commercial purposes should contact an ALOS commercial agent appointed by the Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan (RESTEC).
20 November 2006
After extensive calibration and validation of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) during most of 2006, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have released the observed radiometric and geometric specifications for the 3 ALOS sensors.
While the radiometric accuracy of the PRISM and AVNIR-2 sensors have achieved pre-launch goals, JAXA will be doing further work in coming months on improving the geometric accuracies. They aim to implement improvements by March next year.
In the meantime, ACRES will be enhancing the positional accuracy of AVNIR-2 Map Oriented products by automatically matching the AVNIR-2 data to ACRES Landsat orthocorrected panchromatic reference images. GeoTIFF format products and ERMapper and ENVI headers, which accompany AVNIR-2 Map Oriented CEOS format products, will be updated to reflect the improved positioning. For more details please see ALOS geometric and radiometric specifications.
04 October 2006
Since April 2005 ACRES has distributed mosaiced Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ data covering Australia. This data, originally provided by ACRES, was further processed and mosaiced by the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) who used the data in their National Carbon Accounting System for monitoring land clearing and revegetation. The data is publicly available through ACRES and our Landsat distributors, and not through the AGO.
After recent processing of ACRES data by the AGO, we are now able to release the 2005 epoch of processed Landsat 5 data covering the whole continent. As with the previous 13 epochs which range from 1972 to 2004, the 2005 data is available in 1:1M scale tiles or as an individual continental image of the Australian landmass.
This data is available from Geoscience Australia, ACRES and Landsat distributors. More information on this product suite can be found at the AGO Landsat product suite page.