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Geoscience from Space

Researchers from Department of Geoscience and Department of Engineering together with the Danish company GOMspace in Aalborg, will use the next two years to find out how they can be better doing Geoscience research from space. The project just received 500.000 DKK from Science and Technology, AU.

The last decade has shown a revolution in the accumulation of so-called geospatiale data. These data originate from large missions like ESA's Sentinel program, but also from a heavily growing number of CubeSats. GOMspace has for example plans for launching a so-called megaconstellation consisting of a few hundred CubeSates in orbit around Earth within the next few years.

With the grant from Science and Technology, the partners will investigate possibilities for a closer collaboration between Department of Geoscience, Department of Engineering, and GOMspace focussing on the utilisation of geospatial data for scientific research in e.g. Sun-Earth connection, formation and evolution of the Norwegian mountains and occurrence of special landscape formations like meteor craters and viking fortresses, and how results from these projects can be utilised in industrial projects like: precision agriculture and feedstock extraction.

The expectation is that an identification of the possibilities can lead not only to a closer collaboration between the parties on data driven research, but also to concrete proposals to e.g. the Innovation Fund Denmark and Horizon 2020.

The project is lead by a steering committee consisting of Christoffer Karoff and Bo Holm Jacobsen, Department of Geoscience, Jakob Juul Larsen and Rune Hylsberg Jacobsen, Department of Engineering, and Lars K. Alminde, GomSpace.