IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014 - 63

and without bureaucracy fulfilling the United Nations'
request that satellite data be made available free of charge
to support response to catastrophic events. DLR joined the
Charter [10] in 2010 as its eleventh member. The radar satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X are the main contributing assets of Germany. They appeared to be particularly
helpful in flood disasters because images of the affected
areas can be recorded even through a cloudy sky. On a
case-by-case basis, DLR additionally provides images from
the optical RapidEye satellites.

FIgURE 6. HRWS Demonstrator: prototype of radiator panel during vibration test (Airbus D&S).

IX. CONCLUSION
The German Earth Observation Program was able to
manage the development and operations of complete
service chains from technology, satellite development
and operations up to Earth science and service exploitation in Germany. Germany is committed to further
strengthen these skills also in future together with its
international partners.
X. REFERENCES

FIgURE 7. Pressurized laser-housing (Airbus D&S).

and applicability, key factors for successful service development are the synergistic use of Earth observation and
other data as well as user engagement in an early stage. In
the forefront of the Copernicus Sentinel mission launches
two funding programs have been initiated, one for application and service development with emphasis on their
combined use with the national operational missions,
another fostering the implementation of Earth observation products and services in the governmental bodies.
Other important elements to support and promote the
development and use of Earth observation are the data
access and distribution services for scientific purposes.
Scientists can apply for data acquisitions of German EO
missions for their specific purposes through standard processes. Data contributions are also put in place for selected
international programs, such as the Global Forest Observation Initiative, the GEO Geohazard Supersites and the
International Charter "Space and Major Disasters".
VIII. INTERNATIONAL CHARTER
"SPACE AND MAJOR DISASTERS"
The Charter is a collaborating group of 15 space agencies.
In the event of natural or major industrial disasters, the
Charter provides Earth observation data sets speedily
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ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

[1] BMWi-Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy.
(2010). The space strategy of the German federal government. [Online]. Available: http://www.bmwi.de/EN/Service/
Publications/publications-archive,did=386426.html
[2] R. Werninghaus and S. Buckreuss, "The TerraSAR-X mission and
system design," IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol. 48, no. 2,
pp. 606-614, 2010.
[3] G. Krieger, M. Zink, M. Bachmann, B. Bräutigam, D. Schulze, M.
Martone, P. Rizzoli, U. Steinbrecher, J. W. Antony, F. De Zan, I.
Hajnsek, K. Papathanassiou, F. Kugler, M. R. Cassola, M. Younis, S. Baumgartner, P. López-Dekker, P. Prats, and A. Moreira,
"TanDEM-X: A radar interferometer with two formation-flying
satellites," Acta Astron., vol. 89, pp. 83-98, Aug./Sept. 2013.
[4] J. Janoth, S. Gantert, A. Kaptein, and M. Jochum, "TerraSAR next
generation-Mission overview and capabilities," in Proc. Advanced SAR Workshop, CSA, Canada, Oct. 2013.
[5] A. Moreira, I. Hajnsek, G. Krieger, and K. Papathanassiou, "Tandem-L: Monitoring the Earth's dynamics with InSAR and POLinSAR," in Proc. Int. Workshop Applications Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry (POLinSAR), Frascati, Italy, Jan. 2009.
[6] GFZ. EnMAP. (2012). Wissenschaftliche Anwendungspotentiale und
Nutzungsvorbereitung. [Online]. Available: http://www.enmap.
org/sites/default/files/pdf/pub/EnMAP_Internet_l_Magazin.pdf
[7] DLR, "Earth observation-Discovering, surveying and understanding our planet," 2013, p. 64.
[8] C. Fischer, C. Heer, and R. Werninghaus, "Development of a highresolution wide-swath SAR demonstrator," in Proc. European
Conf. Synthetic Aperture Radar, Aachen, Germany, 2010, pp. 1-4.
[9] DLR. DLR's data exploitation program. [Online]. Available:
http://www.dlr.de/rd/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-4285/6884_
read-9979/
[10] The international charter 'Space and major disasters'. [Online].
Available: http://www.vdisasterscharter.org/home
grs

http://www.bmwi.de/EN/Service/ http://www.enmap http://www.dlr.de/rd/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-4285/6884_ http://www.vdisasterscharter.org/home

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