In this paper we explore the possibility of suitably combining the nodes Ω of the existing geodetic LAGEOS, LAGEOS II and Ajisai SLR satellites and of the radar altimeter Jason–1 satellite in order to increase the accuracy in testing the general relativistic gravitomagnetic Lense–Thirring secular effect in the gravitational field of the Earth. The proposal of introducing Ajisai and Jason–1 in s...

The surface air temperature retrievals from the High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) are evaluated by using observations from the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) for the period of 2006 to 2013. One year of the USCRN data is also used as ground truth in calibrating retrieval biases. The final retrieval results show that mean biases of HIRS retrievals from comparisons to all s...

We present a new database of solar radiation at ground level for Eastern Europe and Africa, the Middle East and Asia, estimated using satellite images from the Meteosat East geostationary satellites. The method presented calculates global horizontal (G) and direct normal irradiance (DNI) at hourly intervals, using the full Meteosat archive from 1998 to present. Validation of the estimated globa...

Future Low Earth Orbiting spacecrafts will contain several IP-enabled devices that are accessible by users through ground stations. As the spacecraft moves around the Earth, mobility solution, such as Mobile IPv6 can be used to handle the mobility of the devices when satellites handover between ground stations. However, if the devices are connected to an on-board Local Area Network, the mobilit...

The task of scheduling communications between satellites and ground control stations is getting more and more critical since an increasing number of satellites must be controlled by a small set of stations. In such a congested scenario, the current practice, in which experts build hand-made schedules, often leaves a large number of communication requests unserved. We report on our experience in...