Advances in Remote Sensing Technology and the Three Poles

2 Continuous Satellite Missions, Data Availability, and Nature of Future Satellite Missions with Implications to Polar Regions

Jagriti Mishra^1,4,*, Takuya Inoue², and Avinash Kumar Pandey³

¹ School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India ² Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, Higashi Hiroshima, Japan ³ Institute of Applied Science and Humanity, GLA University, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India ⁴ Civil Engineering Research Institute for Cold Region, Sapporo, Japan ^* Corresponding author

2.1 Introduction

According to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), a satellite is a body that moves in a curved path around another body in space. This curved path is called an orbit and can be either circular or elliptical. Satellites can be natural or man-made. The Earth is a natural satellite revolving around the Sun and the moon. The first man-made satellite was Sputnik which was launched in October 1957 by Russia. Man-made satellites have different shapes and sizes depending on the purpose they are designed to fulfil, like communication, Earth Observation (EO), navigation, etc. Depending on their purpose, the satellites are installed with respective sensors. Recent advancements in satellite sensor technologies and storage and processing technologies for big-data have aided Remote Sensing (RS) researchers to make use of satellite data for various purposes like forest cover estimation, climate change ...