CHINA, the Group on Earth Observations 2020 Lead Co-Chair, made an announcement on open sharing of Gaofen data at its GEO platform at the opening of the GEO Week 2019 Plenary in Australia in November last year.

“For the first time, China will share global data with 16-meter resolution from Gaofen-1 and Gaofen-6 satellites. We will share three types of such data with coverage outside China: historical records, daily updated Wide-Field-of-View (WFV) images and global coverage data,” explained Ms. Wenbo Zhao, Deputy Director of Earth Observation System and Data Centre, China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Referring to the GEO Data Sharing Principles, Zhao declared that China has developed an open data policy for Gaofen satellites which allows free and open data access by the global community. Registered users around the world, without restrictions as long as they cite the source of the data, can freely discover and download the WFV data from the data platform CNSA-GEO, hosted by Huawei Cloud.

This announcement aims to meet the urgent needs timely for global sustainable development, disaster prevention and mitigation, and climate resilience.

The platform CNSA-GEO shares three types of data: historical records, daily updated Wide-Field-of-View images and global coverage data.

Launched in 2013, Gaofen-1 is a 1080-kg in a 645km Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO), and is equipped with two 2/8m Panchromatic & Multispectral Scanners (PMS), and four 16m Wide Field of View Multispectral Cameras. Gaofen-6, which has around the same liftoff mass, was launched in 2018, also into a 645km SSO. Gaofen-6 is configured with one 2/8m Panchromatic & Multispectral Scanners and one 16m Wide Field of View Multispectral Cameras, which have the ability of high resolution and wide swath imaging on the same satellite. Gaofen-1 and -6 are meant to be complementary satellites, and together provide global coverage.

In the future, Huawei Cloud will cooperate with CNSA and other partners to push forward combination of cloud, 5G and AI technologies with applications of high definition satellite data to provide technological support and key data for resources survey and monitoring, environment monitoring and assessment, disaster prevention and monitoring, global climate change, agriculture and agricultural applications, and earth science researches, to promote global sustainable development and to become a protector of the Earth.