COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation

Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation

The Italian COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation constellation and the role of Planetek in the design and implementation of processing facilities

The Italian COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation is a constellation of two radar satellites (also referred to as COSMOSG or CSG), funded by Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), the Italian Ministry of Defence and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Scientific Research.

COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) is the follow-on mission to COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) assuring continuity and improvement of the supply of SAR services through data and products, to preserve and enhance the ability of Customers and operational Users to fulfil their mandates.

COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation purpose is to monitor the Earth for the sake of emergency prevention, strategy, scientific and commercial purposes, providing data on a global scale to support a variety of applications among which risk management, cartography, forest & environment protection, natural resources exploration, land management, defense and security, maritime surveillance, food & agriculture management.

Within the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission Planetek Italia is responsible for the development of non-standard processors and of the image quality assessment.

NEWS

The COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission

The COSMOSG mission was envisioned and planned by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), together with the Italian Ministry of Defence and the Italian space industry, and joins the four COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) first generation satellites already in orbit. 

The overall objective of the COSMO-SkyMed programme is global Earth observation and the relevant data exploitation for both civil applications (institutional, commercial) and defence activities.

The COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation is at the forefront of radar technologies and will ensure improvements and guarantee continuity with the first generation satellites, preserving the high quality and the highest precision features, both required for the interferometric activities.

With a true generational leap in terms of technology, performance and operational life of the system, the COSMOSG mission aims at improving the quality of the imaging service, providing the end users with enhanced capabilities in terms of higher number of images and image quality (larger swath and finer spatial and radiometric resolution) with respect to the current COSMO-SkyMed constellation.

The CSG requirements call for additional capabilities (e.g. full polarimetric SAR acquisition modes) granting a greater operative versatility, both in terms of programming capability and the effective sharing of the system resources among different typologies of users requesting images of different characteristics.

Planetek role in the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission

Within Italian COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation constellation of two satellites, Planetek has been responsible for the design and implementation of the following processing facilities:

Non-standard processors:

  • PFMOS: Processor that takes in input CSG Level 1D (Ground Terrain Corrected) and DEM data to generate 1D and DEM Mosaicked products
  • PFSPF: Processor that takes in input CSG Level 1B products to generate Speckle Filtered products
  • PFCRP: Processor that takes in input CSG Level 1 standard and not standard products to generate Cropped products

Image Quality Assessment:

  • PFQCA: Tool for CSG standard and not standard products quality control.

In the context of PFQCA tool developments Planetek has developed and released a new product called EarthBIT based on a plugin architecture and GPU based accelerators technology.

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