NCEO's NPG activity delivers expert scientific, technical and operational advice on EO-related policies and services to government departments and agencies. NCEO works particularly with the UK Space Agency and Defra, with a growing liaison with BEIS Climate Team. Advice covers scientific and technical insight; appraisal and review, reports; organisation of technical working groups and science surveys; and inputs to statements. Our expected activities are to provide: 1. Advice by the NCEO Director and senior staff to the UK Space Agency regarding UK Space Policy, including the subscriptions to European Space Agency programmes, Industrial Strategy and spectrum usage. 2. Advice to the Defra group, including Chief Scientific Advisor's Innovation programme regarding the application of space-based Earth Observation to environmental policy and services, including advice on the EU Copernicus programme, the Defra EO Centre of Excellence and the emerging UK Government Earth Observation Service. 3. Ad hoc advice to other government departments and agencies regarding the suitability of EO for particular applications and ways of overcoming particular challenges (e.g. supply of analysis ready data, utility of data cubes), for example to the BEIS Climate Team. 4. Coordination of advice to UK government (Defra, UK Space Agency) and technical expert activities related to the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), including high level briefings. The aim is that UK organisations can contribute to and benefit strongly from developments in the international community, a current government priority. Societal and public benefit are important drivers for these global engagements.

EPIC proposes a Programme Support Activity which will produce a clear integrated roadmap & masterplan for its implementation through a Strategic Research Cluster (SRC) on In-space Electrical Propulsion & Station-Keeping. EPIC plans to do a survey of the current worldwide Electric Propulsion (& related) technologies & their TRL. A collection of requirements from all stakeholders will be done, also assessing potential future missions. Both tasks will build on the 2014 EP Harmonisation & the consultation will be expanded to all EU actors. This will allow to focus efforts on the SRC roadmap’ specific goals. Based on this work, a critical gap analysis of technologies & needs will be done, to create the basis for selection of candidate SRC developments, oriented to satisfy short-term (incremental advances) & medium/long term (disruptive) needs. Then the prioritisation will be the driver & challenge, leading to the selection of activities for an SRC roadmap & masterplan for its implementation, aiming at a validation flight in 2023 & to contribute to European leadership in EP technologies. EPIC will provide a solid & widely consulted advice to the EC on the call texts for operational grants & continuous support to EC/REA to maximise the SRC success. EPIC will analyse the SRC progress, evaluate its risks & put a mitigation plan in place, including the Collaboration Agreement. The EPIC consortium will disseminate its progress & results, & intends to contribute to the SRC results’ dissemination not only with an exploitation plan but also by exercising a close coordination with all operational grants. EPIC is coordinated by ESA & complemented by renowned National Agencies: ASI, BELSPO, CDTI, CNES, DLR & UKSA, & by the major European space industrial associations, Eurospace & SME4Space. This teaming of beneficiaries brings together the multidisciplinary mix of expertise required to deliver an unbiased, rational strategic roadmap & masterplan for EP developments in H2020.

The NCEO NC-ODA programme is focussed on a series of generic science issues that are particularly relevant to development challenges: characterisation and forecasting of land surface state including vegetation change and soil moisture; the evolution of forest carbon and characterisation of carbon fluxes arising from deforestation and degradation; the dynamic nature of fires, their emissions into the atmosphere and the development of large-scale air pollution; the development of a cadre of researchers and applications specialists trained in state-of-the-art Earth Observation (EO). We will address specific problems faced by DAC countries: the vulnerability of crop yields in semi-arid regions in Africa to drought, the challenge of protecting and enhancing Kenya's forest resources to mitigate climate change, the forecast skill necessary to capture hazardous air quality in South-East Asia stemming from open biomass burning, and the current lack of capacity of many African nations to make effective use of satellite EO data. The programme is structured into four WPs. Relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals are: 2 (Zero hunger), 3 (Good health and well-being), 13 (Climate action), 15 (Life on Land), and 17 (Partnership for the goals). WP 1 will improve crop yield modelling in Ghana and potentially Ethiopia through data assimilation of multiple EO data streams, for example effective leaf area index and soil moisture. The research will yield new knowledge on the value of accurate EO data parameters in a data-model system, to better characterise crop change and increase predictive skill, to examine upscaling from landscape to country scale, and improve soil moisture forecast skill [SGDs 2, 15]. WP 2 will establish a baseline of carbon emissions from deforestation in Kenya, identify different types of deforestation and degradation from synthetic aperture radar, optical and laser ranging (LiDAR) data, and establish areas that are suitable for afforestation to support the Vision 2030 of the Kenyan Government that aims to increase forest cover from 6 to 10 per cent by 2030. The work will establish forest reference emission levels and above-ground carbon stocks. This research is key to understanding carbon cycling estimates in a REDD+ policy context. [SGDs 13, 15]. WP 3 will develop and demonstrate new data sources that can improve forecast accuracy for large-scale air pollution during fire events. Currently, forecast models use estimates of fires that fail to capture the magnitude and variability of dynamic large forest and peatland fires and fires due to agricultural residue burning. The research will improve pollutant emissions estimates from fires, EO-based retrievals of smoke plume aerosols and auto-identification of biomass-burning plumes. We will work with stakeholders in the ASEAN countries to co-develop and demonstrate new systems, characterise improvements and train staff in the interpretation of complex EO data [SDGs 3, 13]. WP 4 will build capacity through international EO-related initiatives, including the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) AfriGEOSS initiative and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Working Group on Capacity Building & Data Democracy, to improve access to and use of contemporary EO datasets in African nations and other DAC nations. Work will include scoping of UK-related EO projects and experts related to AfriGEOSS identified needs, extension of the training of WP1-3 to wider DAC countries and to strategic capacity building, co-ordinated work with the relevant GEO initiatives of GFOI and GEOGLAM, and support of access to EO data for DAC countries. These actions will also benefit UK national priorities such as the monitoring of projects supported by the GNU partnership (Germany, Norway and UK), which is making US$5 billion available between 2015 and 2020 for REDD+ early movers, and the Biocarbon Fund's Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) [SDG 17].

Within the last two decades, space-based technology has become a ubiquitous component of everyday life. For example, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) produces subscription television services for over 12 million direct and indirect customers in the UK and Ireland, and 40 million people daily use the Dutch TomTom company's solutions which provide in-car navigation systems and tracking systems for fleet management. Emergency services rely extensively on satellite technology.In this research we will investigate the applicability of Cloud Computing and data handling for the important international problem of Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Debris removal and mitigation. This is an important theme area within the European Space Agency, which protects Europe's citizens and satellite services by detecting space hazards. One of the key goals recently set by Obama was to Strengthen stability in space through: ...; improved information collection and sharing for space object collision avoidance; protection of critical space systems and supporting infrastructures, with special attention to the critical interdependence of space and information systems; and strengthening measures to mitigate orbital debris. (June 2010). A highlighted area of interest was to Develop, maintain, and use space situational awareness (SSA) information from commercial, civil, and national security sources to detect, identify, and attribute actions in space that are contrary to responsible use and the long-term sustainability of the space environment. On Feb 10th the US Iridium-33 and the Russian Cosmos 2251 collided, resulting in debris which could place at risk many other active satellites in this low-earth orbit position. Results of a simulation of this event can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFA74PEs44k [checked Oct 20th 2010]Currently we track around 20,000 objects larger than ~10cm in satellite orbits. In the future, with higher fidelity systems, we will be tracking 500,000+ objects of size 1cm+. This poses significant challenges to be able to scale up the compute resources and complex algorithms required to process the data which arrives twice-daily. We propose to investigate how Cloud computing can be used to tackle these challenges. Cloud computing is internet based computing which allows resources, software, data and services to be provided on demand. Many individuals and businesses use Cloud based services for email, web searching, photo sharing and social networking. Scientists and Engineers are using a similar paradigm to make use of massive amounts of compute and data handling resources provided by companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.Specifically we will investigate the efficacy of the Cloud to develop and test algorithms to target debris for removal and understand the efficiency of the new algorithm - this is important to enable us to perform the modelling required as we track more objects. This is based on the Travelling Purchaser Problem, a variant of the widely used/solved Traveling Salesman Problem. We will investigate whether the Cloud can provide a scalable, reliable and robust infrastructure for the ongoing requirement to aggregate and process ever-increasing volumes of data to propagate orbits, detect events, and plan missions. Such mission planning is an important aspect of launching new satellites and removing existing debris from orbit. We have already built a prototype using Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform and this research will enable us to increase the efficiency of the calculations and improve their scalability. Understanding how the Cloud can be used in this area of science and engineering will also help shape how Cloud providers, such as Microsoft, will provision services in the future which can be used to perform research in disciplines as diverse as healthcare, environmental management, bioinformatics and energy production, which are important challenges for society as a whole.

The project “Per aspera (ad astra)” (Latin meaning “Through hardships to the stars”) has developed an integrated master plan (a.k.a. roadmap) of activities and associated activity descriptions, for a Strategic Research Cluster (SRC) in Space Robotics Technology. The roadmap has been implemented within the SRC through operational grants, which have been recommended by PERASPERA and issued by the European Commission. The overall objective of the SRC has been to deliver, within the 2023/2024 framework, key enabling technologies and demonstrate autonomous robotic systems at a significant scale as key elements for on-orbit satellite servicing and planetary exploration. The PERASPERA objectives have been measurable through the immediate deliverables of the project, these being: • the roadmap, i.e. the master plan to coordinate all the activities for the whole duration of the SRC (delivered during the first year and updated twice) • draft text for the calls to award operational grants This proposal covers the extension of the present PERASPERA as Programme Support Activity (PSA), for the implementation of the Space robotics technologies Strategic Research Clusters (SRCs) in Horizon 2020. This continuation is necessary as the activities in the SRC were planned to cover a period of 7 years while the PSA was only awarded a grant for the duration of 5 years. This proposal hence covers the residual duration of the SRC.