EOMasters Newsletter #006

In this Issue:

EO and RS News

• The Copernicus Family is Growing

• Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) archive backlog made up

• The UK can rejoin the EU's Copernicus programme

   

Software and Tools

•  QGIS Plugins updated in August

Beyond EO

• Cancer cells transformed into healthy muscle cells

EO and RS News

The Copernicus Family is Growing

Nine European Space companies have joined the Copernicus programme. The companies will supply different types of Earth observation data to complement the existing Sentinel missions.

Aerospacelab, Prométhée, and EnduroSat from Belgium, France, and Bulgaria respectively will supply multispectral images from their different satellite constellations. Kuva Space Oy from Finland will supply hyperspectral images. Constellr and OroraTech from Germany and Aistech from Spain will provide thermal infrared data from their satellite missions. Satlantis from Spain and Absolut Sensing from France will provide data on atmospheric composition.

• New Space companies join Copernicus

Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) archive backlog made up

The historical processing of the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) data product is complete, and users can now access satellite data for environmental and climate change monitoring from 2013 to present.

HLS products are created from imagery acquired by four sensors aboard four different satellites that are harmonized to work as a single data collection: the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and OLI-2 sensors aboard the joint NASA/USGS Landsat 8 and 9 satellites, and the MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) aboard the ESA Sentinel-2A and -2B spacecraft. These products provide near-global terrestrial observations at a resolution of 30 meters with a latency of two to three days.

• HLS Team Completes Historical Processing

• Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) Data

The UK can rejoin the EU's Copernicus programme

The European Union and the United Kingdom have reached an agreement that will allow the UK to resume participation in the EU elements of the Copernicus Earth observation programme. The UK had been cut out of Copernicus after it left the EU in 2020, but remained part of the European Space Agency, which co-funds the program. The new deal will enable the UK to access Copernicus data and services, as well as bid on contracts for future missions. The agreement also covers the UK’s involvement in the Horizon Europe research funding program and the EU’s Space Surveillance and Tracking programme. More information is announced to com at the Copernicus website.

• EU and UK reach deal on Copernicus

• Copernicus Homepage

Software and Tools

QGIS Plugins updated in August

• Plugin Update August 2023

Beyond EO

Cancer cells transformed into healthy muscle cells

Researchers in the US have successfully transformed cancer cells of a soft tissue tumour, called rhabdomyosarcoma, which affects mostly children into healthy muscle cells by inhibiting a protein that plays a key role in the abnormal growth of immature muscle precursor cells. The transformed cells lost all cancerous features and developed muscle-specific components.
The researchers hope to find drugs that can induce this transformation in humans without severe side effects and suggest that this approach could be a step towards broader application of differentiation therapies that do not kill cancer cells, but rather make them become normal, mature cells.

That's it for this issue. I hope you enjoyed this collection of news. Stay tuned for the next edition, which will arrive in your inbox in about two weeks.

Tschüss and Goodbye!

Marco