European Space Imaging (EUSI) is one of ESA’s suppliers of commercial Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery for scientific research in Earth Observation (EO). Through its well-established membership of ESA’s Third Party Mission (TPM) programme, its imagery are freely accessible to the remote sensing science community for application development upon acceptance of a project proposal by ESA.

Let’s take a look at EUSI and its contribution to the TPM programme, by meeting one of its key team members, Silvester Fischer.

Born in 1979, in Munich, Germany, Silvester Fischer holds a degree in Geography, from the University of Münster. Silvester started working at EUSI in 2015, as a Sales Manager. Since then, he has been coordinating all ESA related activities within the company, including its contribution to the ESA TPM programme.

ESA: What is EUSI?

Silvester: EUSI has been in existence for over 20 years, located in Munich, Germany, with more than 40 employees. Overall, I would say, our company is specialised in providing innovative imagery solutions. Following this vision since 2002, we have been one of the leading providers of VHR satellite imagery within Europe, providing data with spatial resolution of optical imagery, of up to 30 cm.

We do this in cooperation with our partner Maxar, in the United States, and through our local ground station, we fulfill European customer’s specific tasking requests. We are doing much more than just re-selling imagery, instead we are planning and performing collections in an efficient way all over Europe, for European customers.

Currently, we offer direct collections from the WorldView satellite constellation consisting of four active satellites. Later in 2024, this is to be extended by six more Legion satellites, to expand available collections for 30 cm imagery.

ESA: What is your role in EUSI?

Silvester: As a sales manager within EUSI, I am responsible for driving the company’s business and supporting our direct customers and partners by providing satellite imagery and related services. I am specifically in charge of developing our business within Spain and Austria. However, most of my time and efforts are related to my responsibility for developing and supporting ESA, and all our related programmes and projects.
In this context, I would like to mention our contribution to the ESA TPM programme, for supporting research organisations and start-ups with efficient access to our imagery and related products.

ESA: How does EUSI support ESA’s Third Party Mission programme?

Silvester: EUSI has been active within ESA’s TPM programme since 2015. Since then, we have supported TPM entities (universities and research institutes) worldwide in more than 200 projects and delivered around 50,000 km2 of VHR imagery. Furthermore, in 2020, we opened together with ESA, a license for start-up initiatives, to allow a wider accessibility beyond academic research.

Our approach is always to offer the full product portfolio. Our partner Maxar is just in the final phase to launch the new Maxar Legion constellation, with an additional six satellites that will add significant collection capacities for 30 cm satellite imagery. We will then work quickly to integrate these collections into our TPM portfolio.

In summary, our goal is to serve the TPM programme with the newest and most innovative products, combined with easy and flexible licensing.

ESA: What benefits does the TPM programme provide to EUSI?

Silvester: We certainly see many advantages. First of all, through ESA we receive direct access and connection to basically all European research institutes and start-ups. We can easily connect and grow our network in the market and gain access to innovative ideas from universities, which as a commercial company are difficult to achieve by our own.

ESA: What are the most exciting applications of this partnership between EUSI and TPM?

Silvester: There are many, but one of my favourites is a project or case study done by the Technical University of Valencia, to develop an innovative approach for measuring methane emissions. Methane is, next to carbon dioxide, the most critical gas responsible for the greenhouse effect and global warming. Therefore, developing innovative ways of measuring any leaks of emissions can directly help minimise related negative impacts on the climate.

The project was initiated by the LARS group within the Technical University of Valencia, under the leadership of Professor Luis Ganter, with the aim of evaluating the potential of WorldView-3 SWIR images for detecting methane.

For this purpose, the project accessed via the TPM programme, several satellite images within the Short Wave Infra Red (SWIR) spectrum over oil and gas fields in Algeria, Turkmenistan and China. EUSI specifically contributed with imagery from the WorldView-3 mission and its SWIR sensor. WorldView-3 is the only commercial sensor in space offering eight bands in the SWIR spectrum, and thus offers enormous advantage in accurate measurement of methane emissions at a spatial resolution of 3.7 metres. The team validated results using field measurements and other sources of SWIR imagery, to develop an innovative approach for detecting methane. One important outcome from the project, was showing how VHR imagery with accuracy equal to airborne imagery, can detect even very small leaks from pipelines that are not detectable from other space sensors.

ESA: How did your studies shape your career and any last thought on your overall experience?

Silvester: My work with ESA certainly has shaped my career. Through ESA and our TPM activities I have developed a wide network within the European EO industry. I would consider ESA as the main platform bringing all players in the EO market together. It brings data providers such as EUSI together with research institutes, start-ups and public organisations. As a Geographer, working together with ESA in the EO section I would call this one of the most interesting fields you can be in.