COST Actions

It's been a busy few weeks but a good few weeks. After some great advice from a colleague,

Gavin

I decided to have a look at EU COST Actions. COST Actions are part of a European framework supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe. I found a COST Action in a very relevant area - EO and UAV applications for agriculture. It even crosses into UAV accuracy assessment - something that I presented a paper on at the RSPSoc conference in Glasgow last September.

Pdf programme 

I got talking to someone from Edinburgh university afterwards about the same thing and it turned out that months later when I started looking into COST Actions, he is the one chairing it. So after a quick email to make sure the goals of the study corresponded with ours, I started to put together an application for the Enterprise Ireland reviewer, as they decide who to nominate as the Irish representative for the management committee. She agreed to nominate me, and the rest is history. I'm off to Brussels in the next few weeks for the kick-off meeting. Lots of excellent opportunities for networking and a chance to find out how people are getting on with their own multispectral or hyperspectral cameras - something I mentioned a few posts back.

                             

Added to that, I got some good reviews of a journal paper and found €200 in an envelope in the attic when throwing out old files! Which will come in handy - as this comic from The Upturned Microscope should explain nicely.

Sentinel 1a Launch

Great to see it go - it's the first satellite that I have followed the progress, watched the launch and also actually really cared about it not crashing.

I was following the countdown during the day and 'stayed up' (launch was around 21:30GMT) for the whole thing. It wasn't too far behind the scheduled time either, I think only delayed by about 5 mins compared to the countdown timer. It must be a really impressive sight to see a rocket launch and I've just added it to my 'bucket list'. Maybe I can get a job as a book loader with Amazon?

Books in space

Of course even though launch went well doesn't mean it was out of the woods. Landsat 6 didn't make orbit, so I watched Sentinel 1b past the first three stages and the mission control team seemed happy so I left it at that (plus I was now just watching a computer simulation because no camera were on it). And although Landsat 7 did make it, the problems don't stop there. Sensors can develop problems (Landsat7 is optical - Sentinel 1a is RADAR) so lets hope it is all working fine in a few months time when calibration is complete.

So now the next big event is Sentinel 2a in 2015? Sentinel 1b won't be lauched until 2016. Considering how many funding applications and projects around the EU probably depend on the safe launch of these satellites we should probably have had a party afterwards! Shame the guys in the ISS couldn't see it - how cool would it have been if we could have followed it post launch on this!

ISS Cam