COSMO-SkyMed represents the first dual-use Earth Observation program in the world. Conceived and developed taking into account the differences exigencies coming from civilian and military users. Therefore the program development has due satisfied both requirements, those typically military and those linked to the heterogeneous civilian world. In the ECSS standards is clearly settled the project work flow. There is the initial phase in which it's necessary to fix the user requirements, followed by the Phase A, named Feasibility, in which the industrial teams has to analyze the feasibility of the project. It is evident that this logical flow became very "fragile" for a dual use program cause its internal complexity. The cooperation between the civilian world and the military one it has been the bigger challenge for the COSMO's Program Office. © 2006 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.

COnstellation of small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation (COSMO-SkyMed) is the largest Italian investment in Space Systems for Earth Observation, commissioned and funded by Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Italian Ministry of Defence (MoD). COSMO-SkyMed is a Dual-Use (Civilian and Defence) end-to-end Earth Observation System aimed at establishing a global service supplying provision of data, products and services compliant with well-established international standards and relevant to a wide range of applications, such as Risk Management, Scientific and Commercial Applications and Defence Applications. The system consists of a constellation of four LEO mid-sized satellites, each equipped with a multi-mode high-resolution SAR operating at X-band. The first and second COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been successfully launched the 8th of June and the 9th of December 2007 respectively, while the remaining two satellites will be gradually deployed by the end of 2009. COSMO-SkyMed 1 and 2 completed their Commissioning phase to test, verify and qualify the overall System and from the 1st of August both satellites are in the operational phase. The results of the commissioning phase of COSMO-SkyMed 1 and 2 are presented together with the Scientific Mission Exploitation strategy (i.e.: Announcement of Opportunity, Background Mission).

The NASA Juno mission has been investigating Jupiter's atmosphere since August 2016, providing unprecedented insights into the giant planet. The Jupiter Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) experiment, on board Juno, performed spectroscopic observations of the H3+ emissions both in the auroral regions (Dinelli et al., 2017; Adriani et al., 2017; Mura et al., 2017) and at mid latitudes. In the present work, we analyse the observations acquired by the JIRAM spectrometer during the first perijove passage on 26-27 August 2016, when the spacecraft was at about 500,000-1,200,000 km (7-17 RJ) from the planet. During a portion of the observations, the slit of the spectrometer sampled Jupiter's limb in the latitude range from 30° to 60° in both hemispheres. The limb spectra show the typical features of the H3+ emission in the 3-4 μm spectral range, which are generally used to retrieve the H3+ concentration and temperature in the auroral region. In this work we employ above spectral region to provide new insight into the H3+ vertical distribution. The spatial resolution of the limb observations of Jupiter, ranging between 50 and 130 km, is favorable for investigating the vertical distribution of H3+. The vertical profiles of the H3+ limb intensity will be presented along with the preliminary results of the retrieval on H3+ vertical volume mixing ratio (VMR) height profiles, and comparison with predictions from the available atmospheric models of the planet. Possible variability of the altitude of the peak emission with respect to latitude and longitude will also be discussed.

Only a small percentage of SAR data are immediately used after the acquisition, the remaining part is archived for a future use. Those data could potentially contain unexploited valuable environmental information. In this paper it is explored the possibility to use quick look (QL) images, generated for cataloguing purposes also to provide information on changes occurred on the scene. In the proposed approach a change map is first generated, then it is integrated with a priori external data, like DEM and finally a possible change classification is proposed. At the present stage of development three classes have been considered: rain cell, flooded areas and unspecific changes. The methodology has been applied to a data set of 30 images not all of them affected by the previously mentioned phenomena. The results obtained are encouraging and can justify the use of quick look data for public utility. © 2015 IEEE.