Agenda

The European Commission is organising on 13 September 2018 a Workshop on ‘Copernicus and aerial platforms’ to explore how unmanned aerial platforms could potentially complement Earth Observation capabilities in Copernicus. The Copernicus programme currently relies on a set of dedicated satellites (7 Sentinels), as well as contributing missions and in situ capacities to deliver six services (land, atmosphere, climate change, marine environment, emergency management, security). Unmanned aerial platforms, notably UASs, become more and more reliable and robust and are already providing operational Earth observation capacities that could offer, under certain conditions, useful complementarity with satellite-based services. High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites or Platform Systems will operate quasi-stationarily over a fixed point on Earth from weeks to months at very high altitude and will soon provide additional options. The Workshop, hosted in the premises of Eurocontrol in Brussels, will link industry representatives from the space, Earth observation and unmanned aerial systems sectors to look at the existing and upcoming aerial observation capacities and applications, to understand the operational and legal aspects for using unmanned aerial platforms and to capture potential user needs. This event is open and free to registered participants.