COSMO-SkyMed an existing opportunity for observing the Earth

COnstellation of small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation (COSMO-SkyMed) is the largest Italian investment in Space Systems forEarth 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. Three out of four COSMO-SkyMed satellites have been successfully launched the 8th of June, the 9th of December 2007 and the 25th of October 2008 respectively, while the remaining satellite will be deployed within 2010. COSMO-SkyMed 1 and 2 completed their commissioning phase to test, verify and qualify the overall system and from the 1st of August 2008 both satellites are in the operational phase. The third satellite is still performing its commissioning and it is expected to enter in operation in the second half of 2009. 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).