GSOC was once more a desirable partner thanks to its wide-ranging expertise. Germany was involved, and from then on it again financed new national space projects. With these remote sensing projects a promising new field of activity could then be established at GSOC.įortunately, manned spaceflight had also gained a foothold in Europe. This meant that the weather satellite data routinely acquired at the Weilheim ground station could be scientifically processed in cooperation with the German atmospheric research community.Īll these tasks were so successfully realised that in 1980 ESA gave GSOC the responsibility to process and distribute the data acquired in Europe by the first US civilian SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite, SEASAT. Shortly afterward, the German Research Foundation approved a GSOC proposal to establish and operate a Meteosat image processing facility. Its most important responsibilities were to liaise between ESA and national users of the data, and to encourage use of these data in Germany. GSOC was selected by the then Ministry of Science in 1976 as the corresponding German “National Point of Contact” NPOC. It initially focused on acquiring, processing and distributing the data from NASA's Landsat programme, which began in 1972. It was given the responsibility to set up and operate image conversion equipment for processing the analogue image data recorded from aircraft, as well as a photo lab and a data management system.Īlmost at the same time ESA's Earthnet Programmme started in Europe. When in the mid-1970s the German Test and Research Institute for Aviation and Space Flight DFVLR, as the parent institution was then named, initiated the era of remote sensing projects with an earth science aerial measurement programme, GSOC was also a participant. The rapidly developing field of earth observation from space offered a solution. ![]() For political reasons new national space projects were no longer financed or had to be carried out primarily as European programmes, so a search began for a new range of tasks. Since GSOC was conceived to provide support exclusively for national satellite projects, such as AZUR, AEROS, HELIOS and SYMPHONIE, this facility was increasingly existentially threatened in the second half of the 1970s after the founding of ESA in 1975 during a phase of the very distinct Europeanisation of German space activities. The German Remote Sensing Data Center DFD has its roots in the German Space Operations Center GSOC in Oberpfaffenhofen. Winfried Markwitz, 1st DFD Director (1980-1996)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |