NATO Conference , Satellites & Me. A Copernicus adventure

July 3, 2017 2-minute read

There are some days that will be forever engraved in one’s memory. Today was one.

I had the chance to participate as a Speaker at the 2nd European Symposium on Geoinformation. This event was organized under the patronnage of the German Bundeswehr & the German Ministry of Defence.

Needless to say, a quite high profile exposition with many very interesting talks.

Couple of months ago, I started working on joint project between aerospace graduates (myself and a colleague from my master programme) and Brigadier General Friedrich Teichmann.

Dr Friedrich Teichmann is the Director of the Geo-Spatial Institute of the Austrian Armed Forces and was as well a professor in my master programme. Specializing in satellites technologies.

He gave me the opportunity to work on a project using data from the recently launched Copernicus satellites constellation. If you are not familiar with Copernicus, you should know that it is a prime example of European cooperation space technology. It consists of a series of imaging satellites operating on multiple bands & dimensions ( optical / radar / etc).
The best of it all ? The data is free to access and use privately AND commercialy for any European entity.

This means, that any person can access thousands over thousands of earth observation data in near real time ( the images are sometimes just a couple of hours old).

Building upon that, we decided to create a system for water bodies obseveation and especially growth and shrinkage.
We then presented this project at the symposium, as a prime example of civilian & academic & military cooperation.

This was my first ever public speaking in a conference. And doing it in front of many high profiles intelligence and geoinformation officers from NATO countries was adding pressure to the task.

But presenting my project with passion quickly overturned my stress and left me talking again and again about the in and outs the system. Quickly prompting the moderator to remind us of our time slot !