GMES Gets New Name
In Europe, there’s been a huge coordinated effort by scientists to monitor the state of the environment through the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security program, or GMES for short.
Of course, GMES is a bit of a tongue twister, which is why GMES now has a new name: Kopernikus, named, of course, after the Polish astronomer.
Their motto is "We care for a safer world." Involving projects in numerous countries around the world, the objective of Kopernikus is to monitor the state of the environment on land, at sea and in the atmosphere and to improve the security of the citizens in a world facing an increased risk of natural and other disasters.
The ESA provides additional information:
More than 40 European and non-European Earth Observation satellites have united to provide data to GMES Services over the next years. ESA will coordinate the data acquisitions seeking to optimise resources from the variety of European and non-European EO satellite missions. Considered missions include ESA Member States’ missions, such as France’s Spot and Pleiades satellites, Germany’s TerraSAR-X, Italy’s CosmoSkyMed, the UK-led DMC constellation (including the soon-to-be launched DMC-UK2 and Spain’s Deimos-1), as well as Canada’s Radarsat, Israel’s Eros and other non-European missions distributed through European companies. In addition, ESA will act as data provider for its own EO missions, such as Envisat and ERS-2, as well as its Third Party Missions.
Here’s a great video of how the birds give scientists a nice view of the earth:
