Copernicus Data in Support of the NOAA Mission and the Value of International Partnerships: Copernicus data across all Sentinel missions has become an integral part of NOAA products and services. Cooperation has expanded beyond just data exchange into joint satellite mission cooperation. As NOAA continues to leverage Copernicus data, it looks towards future Copernicus missions as opportunities for further cooperation that would directly benefit the NOAA mission.

Imaging spectroscopy has been identified by ESA, NASA and other international space agencies as key to addressing a number of most important scientific and environmental management objectives. To implement the critical EU- and related policies for the management of natural resources, assets and benefits, and to achieve the objectives outlined by NASA’s Decadal Survey in ecosystem science, hydrology and geology, high fidelity imaging spectroscopy data with global coverage and high spatial resolution are required. As such, ESA’s CHIME (Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment) and NASA’s SBG (Surface Biology and Geology) satellite missions aim to provide imaging spectroscopy data at global coverage at regular intervals of time with high spatial resolution for visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) reflectances.

However, the scientific and applied objectives motivate more spatial coverage and more rapid revisit than any one agency’s observing system can provide. With the development of SBG and CHIME, the mid-to-late 2020s will see more global coverage spectroscopic observing systems, whereby these challenging needs can be more fully met by a multi-mission and multi-Agency synergetic approach, rather than by any single observing system.

Therefore, an ESA-NASA cooperation on imaging spectroscopy space missions was seen as a priority for collaboration, specifically given the complementarity of mission objectives and measurement targets of the SBG and CHIME. Such cooperation is now being formalized as part of the ESA-NASA Joint Program Planning Group activities.

The two teams have joined forces to address the logistical, algorithmic and calibration issues raised by harmonizing data across the two measurement programs, with the goal of providing research and applications communities with seamless high-level data products, effectively reducing the interval between usable observations significantly. An additional challenge comes from the volume and complexity of global, high spatial resolution, quasi-weekly data, and both teams are addressing the data science challenges of processing and merging heterogenous data at unprecedented scale.
In this context, three Working Groups have been set up to outline the key areas of cooperation between the two missions, and establish a roadmap for the implementation of cooperation; Data Products and Algorithms, Calibration/Validation, and End-to-End Modelling and Simulation. These Working Groups build on cooperation areas identified during the workshop on International Cooperation in Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy in 2019, as well as the joint ESA-NASA Hypersense campaigns with the NASA JPL AVIRIS sensor during 2018 and 2021 to collect airborne, spaceborne and in-situ data over a diverse set of European test-sites, aimed to allow algorithm development, testing and comparison for the CHIME and SBG communities.

This contribution will present the aims and objectives of the CHIME-SBG cooperation, and how it may benefit and enhance addressing CHIME and SBG’s key scientific and environmental management objectives. The key areas of collaboration identified by each of the WGs, as well as the established roadmaps will be presented.

The use of Earth remote sensing (ERS) data is of growing importance for economy and society and is an indispensable source of information for the future. Considering this, since 2017 Ukraine exerts itself to deepen cooperation with the EU in the ERS area, which complies with the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine.
The Cooperation Arrangement on Copernicus was signed in 2018 between the European Commission and the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU), as well as a technical operating arrangement between the SSAU and the ESA in 2019. A Regional Copernicus Data Access / Data Mirror Site was established in Ukraine and is operational now as a follow-up to these agreements. This has provided improved access to Sentinel data and its usage in Ukraine.
Further steps envisage concluding a technical operating arrangement between the SSAU and the EUMETSAT and incorporating Ukrainian ERS Satellite to the Copernicus Program, which is meant to broaden the scope of data received, as well as to widen Ukrainian contribution to the EU Copernicus Programme.