In recent news by Spacenews, The Government of French has agreed to open its SPOT optical remote sensing data archive and distribute, free of charge to noncommercial users.
Under this policy all the SPOT satellite data that are at least five years old will be made available freely for noncommercial users. The French government decision follows a similar decision, made in 2013, by the European Commission to make freely available much of the data from the future Copernicus series of optical and radar Earth observation satellites.
Images older than five years, the official said, are mainly of interest to science and research organizations and are not a major source of revenue for Airbus Defence and Space’s geo-information division.
CNES said the Spot system — five satellites launched since 1986, with Spot 5 still operating well past its scheduled retirement — has produced more than 30 million images that now can be used to study environmental change over more than a quarter-century.
CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall said the French government’s sustained investment in the Spot satellite series makes it logical that the archive should be opened “to the wider public. With this contribution to the World Heritage program, France is blazing a trail that other nations are soon likely to follow, given the enthusiastic reception for this initiative.”
Source: Spacenews
