Kimberley region, Australia. Captured by ESA’s Envisat MERIS instrument. Copyright: ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have signed an agreement which will give Australia better access to information from Europe’s Earth-observing satellites, while ESA will benefit from Australia’s scientific expertise.

Signed at the Paris Air & Space Show last week, the agreement focuses on the collaboration between Australian and European researchers in the evaluation of satellite data for use in Australia, while jointly developing new applications and space technologies for future satellites.

While ESA will greatly benefit from Australia’s scientific expertise, the calibration and validation activities for European satellites will also be improved.

“The collaboration with the European Space Agency further strengthens Australia’s global position in the space economy,” said CSIRO’s Executive Director of National Facilities and Collections, Dr David Williams, who signed the deal.

“Currently there are over 100 Australian government programmes and hundreds of researchers relying on data from foreign satellites, making Australia one of the largest users world-wide of Earth observation data.”

Australia and ESA have been collaborating in Earth observation for many years, including cooperation on the ERS and Envisat missions in the development of the instruments, calibration and validation activities, and data exploitation.

“ESA welcomes this increased cooperation with Australia. It will strengthen scientific links and stimulate industrial opportunities,” said Volker Liebig, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes.

“The cooperation will also improve the calibration and validation of Earth observation data over Australia and improve the data quality of our missions.”

ESA operates a facility in Western Australia that is used to track its various space science missions, including the Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.