News Story

At the 2025 Munich Satellite Navigation Summit, René Kleessen, Program Director for European Space Agency (ESA) Projects at the German Space Agency (DLR), delivered a precise and pointed message on Germany’s work to increase the resilience of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies. “This year’s summit theme – ‘Resilient PNT: Backbone of Autonomy and Critical ...

Planet Labs Germany, part of the Planet Group, signed government deal in Germany as the German government looks to improve its water and land management from space. Planet signed a seven-figure contract with the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) for an initial one year time period, with an option for two more years. Planet announced the ...

When it comes to climate, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. The effects of Arctic warming are a harbinger of what’s coming to all terrestrial biomes, including the deserts of Arizona.  That’s why an international project led by NAU researchers, which has resulted in the first high-resolution maps of plant biomass ...

A pandemic of lianas is sweeping through tropical forests, reducing their ability to store carbon and limiting their role in mitigating climate change. Two recent studies from Leiden University highlight the issue. ‘We now understand why lianas are visible in satellite imagery.’ Tropical forests annually absorb roughly the amount of CO₂ emitted by the whole ...

In the waters off New England, one of Earth’s rarest mammals swims slowly, mouth agape. The North Atlantic right whale filters clouds of tiny reddish zooplankton—called Calanus finmarchicus—from the sea. These zooplankton, no bigger than grains of rice, are the whale’s lifeline. Only about 370 of these massive creatures remain. For decades, tracking the tiny ...

A coalition of organizations has assessed how locally produced maps stack up against global open-access data sets to evaluate deforestation in the context of cocoa production. The assessment will be useful for cocoa producers as they work toward compliance with the EU anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR), set to take effect at the end of the year, ...

The Army has finalized its award of a five-year, $499 million contract vehicle for research-and-development work focused on advancing geospatial technology systems and deploying them to mission operators. All eight companies that submitted bids were chosen for this fourth iteration of the GRIDS program – short for Geospatial Research, Integration, Development and Support IV. The ...

The European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) held its first General Board Meeting (GBM) of the year on 1 April 2025 in Porto, Portugal. The meeting coincided with the 2025 edition of the GISTAM Conference (International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management), one of the leading international events in the GIS field. As an institutional ...

The TACTERA software solution, produced by UK aerospace supplier Flare Bright, will be unveiled this week at the SOF Week 2025 exhibition in Tampa, Florida, as it targets potential interest in GPS-free navigation systems for drones deployed in contested environments from the US and UK militaries. According to Flare Bright, the development of the capability has received resources from the ...

A new study from the U.S. Geological Survey finds that groundwater in Appalachia, the Gulf Coast and California is susceptible to contamination from orphaned oil and gas wells. For the first time, scientists have mapped groundwater variables nationally to understand which aquifers are most vulnerable to contamination from orphan wells.  Oil and gas wells with ...

Google may be testing replacing local pack at the top of the Google Search results for “near me” related queries with an AI Overview. So instead of showing a map and the three or so local listings, Google is showing an AI Overview with some local information. I cannot replicate this but Chris Lonergan spotted ...

The UK’s National Oceanography Center (NOC) has renewed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Royal Navy to support innovation and advances in autonomous and robotic underwater systems. As disclosed, the MoU includes collaboration with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) science and technology organization. The agreement was signed during the Ocean ...

Manycore Tech, a Hangzhou-based design firm, is seeking to become a global leader in spatial intelligence, a burgeoning field that blends artificial intelligence (AI) with real-world spatial data to build what is referred to as a “world model”. “All users pursue beauty, so we’re here to offer a platform where their ideas can be realistically and accurately ...

The Police Regional Office in the Caraga Region (PRO-13) launched a new mobile application on Monday designed to make crime reporting and police assistance more accessible to residents and tourists. The app, called AGAP Caraga, integrates location-based technology to allow users to report crimes, request police help, receive public safety alerts and connect with the ...

A high-level Indian delegation, led by Vivek Bharadwaj, Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR), will present the country’s flagship SVAMITVA Scheme (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas) and Gram Manchitra platform during the international conference, which is being attended by global policymakers, experts, and development partners. The Indian delegation also ...

India’s aviation sector has marked a significant milestone with the launch of the country’s first AI-powered airport digital twin at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad. Developed by GMR Airports, this transformative platform is complemented by the newly introduced next-generation Airport Predictive Operation Centre (APOC), setting new benchmarks in airport management, operational efficiency, and passenger satisfaction. ...

Less than a week after its launch, the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite has delivered its inaugural radar images of Earth. Three stunning images captured by the satellite, showcasing diverse landscapes across the European continent, have been released by the European Space Agency (ESA). They highlight the satellite’s potential for advanced environmental monitoring. Launched aboard a Vega-C ...

Whether you want to start growing your own food, join a community garden or find locally owned and grown food, an Ypsilanti-based nonprofit wants to help. The nonprofit Growing Hope recently launched an interactive map of community gardens, farms, locally owned grocery stores, food pantries and places to borrow or get free seeds, tools and other growing ...

CATALYST, a PCI Geomatics Enterprise Inc. brand has announced that its CATALYST Professional, CATALYST Enterprise, and CATALYST OnBoard software now support imagery from Maxar’s WorldView Legion, the latest ultra-high-resolution Earth observation satellite constellation. This significant development enables CATALYST users to harness the exceptional clarity of WorldView Legion’s 30 cm-class data for precise analysis and decision-making ...

At Goddard Space Flight Center, the GSFC Data Science Group has completed the testing for their SatVision Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) Foundation Model, a geospatial foundation model for coarse-resolution all-sky remote sensing imagery. The team, comprised of Mark Carroll, Caleb Spradlin, Jordan Caraballo-Vega, Jian Li, Jie Gong, and Paul Montesano, has now released their model for wide ...

With support from the European Space Agency (ESA), Switzerland-based Luxtelligence has demonstrated prototyping capabilities in a novel photonic platform. The platform is based on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), suited for the development of high-speed electro-optic modulators. Such modulators could, in turn, be used in positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies. Speaking at the ESA-hosted final presentation ...

A NEW interactive map highlighting information about publicly-owned land across Scotland has been created. The new resource – which can be found HERE – also allows people to see the land managed by the Scottish Crown Estate. Users can explore information on individual land parcels, including its ownership and size. The information has been brought together as ...

In many Asian regions, especially in China, agricultural fields are typically small, scattered, and lack clear boundaries, which complicates effective crop distribution and agricultural analysis using remote sensing technology. Now, a research group from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has addressed this challenge with a novel dual-branch deep learning model ...

Experts from Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) have recently conducted work in Antarctica that will, amongst other things, help scientists monitor the effects of climate change. The hydrographic, surveying and positioning team members undertook a range of activities aimed at maintaining the flow of key data, for which precise annual recalibration is ...

The Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) has published the Geothermal Atlas of Albeta, a public, web-based geographic information system (GIS) application that provides geoscience data and information relevant to the assessment deep geothermal energy potential in Alberta, Canada. The Geothermal Atlas of Alberta can be accessed via this link. The tool is designed to support the exploration and development of geothermal ...

A new, up-to-date thermal map of Brno has just been released, the result of a collaborative project between the City of Brno and the Czech Globe agency (part of the Czech Academy of Sciences). Aerial photography for the project took place during the summer. “The city has been cooperating with scientific organizations on surface imaging ...

A new, freely available and open-source app that uses aerial survey data to map and identify wild animals, has been launched by researchers from Edith Cowan University. The app is intended to help researchers and community groups across the world to conduct wildlife imagery surveys. Known as WISDAM — Wildlife Image Survey Detection and Mapping — the ...

The Earth is large and always changing. Throughout history we’ve used maps to visualize our planet, and everyone has used Google Maps to get from Point A to B.  Researchers at the University of Calgary are raising the bar even further than Google, developing a software system that can do more than just visualize the ...

Forest ecosystems of the future will have to cope with very different conditions to those of today. For this reason, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) state that a strategic approach to forest management is crucial. To this end, the research team has developed iLand: a simulation model that can compute long-term developments ...

Skykraft, an Australian company, has signed a Participating Project Partner Agreement for the “Demonstration of Collaborative Position Navigation and Timing (PNT) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO)” project. This agreement, supported by an International Space Investment (ISI) India Projects grant from the Australian Government, will promote joint space projects between Australia and India. The primary goal ...