Knowledge and technology transfer (hereafter referred to as KTT) between academia and society has long been recognized as a key driver of innovation and economic development. Knowledge transfer (KT) is defined by Bloedon and Stokes, (1994) “as the process by which knowledge concerning the making or doing of useful things contained within one organized setting is brought into use within another organizational context”. Similarly, technology transfer (TT) can be defined as the movement of a specific technology from one place to another. Technology transfer (TT) between academia and industry is an important source of innovation and economic development. Successful TT depends strongly on effective communication between academic and external partners. This is best facilitated by an academic intermediary who can provide meaningful interactions. An academic intermediary can ensure expertise and knowledge are communicated using a common language and that goals and expectations are clear between partners. In the field of remote sensing intermediaries play a particularly essential role. The rapid expansion of the remote sensing sector over the last decade, including sensor technologies and the volume of freely available data has created a bottleneck between available data and technology and ready to use products outside of academia. Regional and municipal government agencies, small-medium enterprises (SMEs), and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who would greatly benefit from remote sensing data often lack expertise and capacity to produce or access high quality products and technologies. Additionally, large private sector companies with expertise in internal Research and Development (R&D) departments who operate on profit-driven strategies may limit investment in new untested RS solutions because of limited market size or monetarization risks. Academic institutions are well positioned to act as intermediaries and address this bottleneck through the implementation of robust KTT strategies to help meet regional, national, and international demand for high quality RS data and technology.
Several initiatives have been made by Space Agencies, academic institutions or private companies covering broad range of KTT work but upon closer examination. All these initiatives focus on profit-based operation predominantly by licensing developments and products or the creation of spin-offs. The following aspects are not considered:
1. Missing benefit for scientists. Most current KTT frameworks are viewed as mutually exclusive or as direct competition for resources and reputation with scientific work. This results in lost opportunities for further operational development of innovative ideas being developed in research settings.
2. Undervaluation of the social impact of KTT. KTT is often seen as a profit-driven initiative only. In our opinion More weight and value should be put on the social, political, and environmental impact of KTT activities to broaden the reach and participation.
3. Combining open science with commercial use. KTT can and should focus on the simultaneous development of open-source community and commercial versions with advanced functionalities to maintain the principles of open science which are central to current good scientific practice.
4. KTT should not only be viewed as an exit strategy for scientists to leave academia. KTT should be embedded in institutional frameworks to encourage and inspire scientific developments from scientists pursuing academic careers.
To address this bottleneck and establish a long-term innovation platform and thematic TT infrastructure, FERN.Lab, Remote Sensing for Sustainable Use of Resources Helmholtz Innovation Lab was founded at the Geodesy Department of the German Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in January 2020. FERN.Lab is funded by the Helmholtz Association, the largest scientific organization in Germany. The goal of FERN.Lab is to facilitate TT and deliver remote sensing products to commercial and non-commercial partners by acting as an expert intermediary platform.
We will present two distinct approaches to improve this bottleneck from science market and society
1. The first is a “pull” approach to develop tailor-made technologies for and funded by external third parties.
2. The second is a “push” approach to promote existing departmental technologies with high market potential.
The pull and push of technologies to external partners is accomplished by a combination of competencies and services. This includes business development, scientific development, software development, and public relations. All of them directly address institutional, financial and skills gap that can cause the TT process to fail. By implementing a robust TT framework for remote sensing products, the impact of research has the potential to be much broader and farther reaching. Additionally, these efforts can improve the acceptance of remote sensing outside of academia improving and modernizing methods used in diverse sectors which in turn can benefit not only individual partners but also politics, society, and the environment.

Satellite Earth Observation (EO) data is ubiquitously used in many applications, providing basic services to society, such as environment monitoring, emergency management and civilian security. Due to the increasing request of EO products by the market, the classical EO data chain generates a severe bottleneck problem, further exacerbated in constellations. A huge amount of EO raw data generated on-board the satellite must be transferred to ground, slowing down the EO product availability, increasing latency, and hampering the growth of applications in accordance with the increased user demand.
The EO-ALERT European Commission H2020 project (http://eo-alert-h2020.eu/) proposes the definition, development, and verification and validation through ground hardware and software testing, of a next-generation Earth Observation (EO) data processing chain. The proposed data processing chain is based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves EO data processing elements traditionally executed in the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of delivering EO products to the end user with very low latency. EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, and below one minute in realistic scenarios.
The proposed EO-ALERT architecture is enabled by on-board processing, recent improvements in processing hardware using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, and persistent space-to-ground communications links. EO-ALERT combines innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications, namely: on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the generation of alerts (EO products) using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board AI-based data compression and encryption, high-speed on-board avionics, and reconfigurable high data rate communication links to ground, including a separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage.
This paper presents the proposed architecture, its hardware and software realization for the ground testing in a representative environment and its performance. The architecture’s performance is evaluated considering two different user scenarios where very low latency (almost-real-time) EO product delivery is required: ship detection and extreme weather monitoring/nowcasting. The hardware testing results show that, when implemented using COTS components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can deliver alerts to the end user with a latency below five minutes, for both SAR and Optical missions, demonstrating the viability of the EO-ALERT architecture. In particular, in several test scenarios, for both the TerraSAR-X SAR and DEIMOS-2 Optical Very High Resolution (VHR) missions, hardware and software testing of the proposed architecture has shown it can deliver EO products and alerts to the end user globally, with latency lower than 1.5 minutes, opening unprecedented opportunities for the exploitation of civil EO products, especially in latency-sensitive scenarios, such as disaster management.

Currently, the demand for small satellites is increasing strongly. In addition to cost advantages in
manufacturing and during operation, the increasing extension of small satellites will also favor a
faster technical renewal of the used payloads. Also operation of constellations and megaconstellations
will become economically feasible. Due to the technical progress especially in
instruments for Earth observation in recent years, novel and high-performance Earth observation
systems with ground resolutions below 50 cm, video-like temporal resolutions and response times
below one hour should be feasible in the medium term. These new capabilities, together with the
accelerated market, place new and challenging demands on technical development processes.
To support developments in the area of airborne and satellite-based earth observation, OHB Digital
Connect GmbH operates a real-time capable test environment for more than 10 years. This
environment is used to test active and passive optical instruments and components for data
management and methods and algorithms for fully automated mostly real-time data processing, to
demonstrate their performance and to evaluate them. It is also intended to be used for calibrations
and validations for Earth observation satellites and could potentially be used for special remote
sensing tasks, e.g. airborne remote sensing in the event of disasters.
The test environment consists of the airborne system Condor, the high-rate data link ARDS (Aerial
Reconnaissance Data System) and the transportable and decentralized ground system mAROC
(Mobile Aerial Reconnaissance Operation Center). The Condor's platform is a Stemme S10 VTX, a
motorized glider operated in cooperation with Stemme AG under a permit-to-fly. The Condor can be
equipped with modular containers, so called Wingpods, on both sides under the wings. The
Wingpods can be equipped with several instruments as well as control electronics. For this purpose,
they have a standardized mechanical interface, provide an electrical supply and have a 10Gbit
interface into the cockpit. Furthermore, a 19`` rack is available in the cockpit, in which e.g.
components for on-board data processing can be integrated. By operating under a permit to fly, the
Condor can be quickly and cost-effectively rebuild to new configurations in the Wingpods and in the
cockpit. In addition to transportable workstations, several transportable 19`` racks with an
uninterruptible power supply are available in the mAROC, which can be equipped for the respective
task. Due to the decentralized design, the individual components do not have to be operated at the
same location. The ARDS and mAROC will also ensure in-situ capability during reconnaissance and adhoc
capability for use.
OHB Digital Connect GmbH would like to present the work carried out to date in the area of Airborne
Campaigns - the earth observation in situ solution in the context of current developments in the field
of end-to-end earth observation and highlight the potential for future developments in this area.

In the field for Earth Observation systems, constellations and related services, the ground segment is strategic to address the exponential growth of data volume and the increased requirements from the customers. In addition, customer demands are increasingly varied and their priorities depend on the contexts in which satellites are used.

It is therefore essential to develop ground segments to meet operational challenges, while being modular and scalable enough to adapt to the needs of a range of customers and maintaining industrial competitiveness on the worldwide market of Earth Observation satellite systems.

Furthermore, open and standardised interfaces within the ground segment accelerate time to market of innovative and competitive products. Integrating these into the system can be an important differentiator with respect to actors outside Europe.

DOMINO-X, co-funded by the space component of the Plan France Relance, initiates the necessary technological and organizational evolutions to meet market expectations:
• Evolutions in the design of architectures, modular to adapt to the right customer need, scalable to adapt to change, both easing the integration of innovative modules;
• Evolution in the way of developing and integrating, of collaborating;
• Evolutions towards the coalescing of innovative partners;
• Technological developments

DOMINO-X exploits Cloud and Artificial Intelligence technologies to standardize the architectures of ground-based Earth observation segments and promote the emergence of a modular product and service offering.

DOMINO-X has a strong focus on the upstream parts of the ground segments: antennas, command and control, data production and management, satellite programming and reprogramming, collection planning and the underlying IT platforms.

The key success factor of DOMINO-X is its ability to embark European space actors, both from the private and the institutional sectors, on a unified high level architecture of ground segment and standardised interfaces. The creation of a European ecosystem of ground segment product providers will definitively foster European competitiveness and offer a response to customer requests at the best cost.