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Over 300 scientists gathered in Beijing on 21-25 April to kick off the second phase of the Sino-European Dragon program. Dragon is a joint undertaking between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to encourage increased exploitation of ESA and Chinese Earth observation data in China.

In a speech to the symposium, ESA’s Director for Legal Affairs and External Relations, Rene Oosterlinck, said: ‘We are achieving much better results than if we had worked separately.’

Under Dragon 1, data from ESA missions was used in 16 different projects, including agricultural and forest monitoring, water resource assessment, atmospheric chemistry, terrain measurement, ocean environment and climate change. Scientific results from these projects were presented to the conference.

In the next phase, Dragon 2, European and Chinese scientists will have equal access to the data available from ESA and Chinese satellites.

The number of projects in the program has been increased to 25, following an announcement of opportunity in which 52 proposals were received. The projects will cover atmospheric studies, topographic mapping, hydrology, sea-ice monitoring, coastal-zones monitoring, land environment, geology, renewable resources, oceanography, hazards, large sporting events and the calibration and validation of satellite data.

Dragon 2 EO data delivery will commence in May and continue for four years.

ASM Newsletter is distributed by e-mail every two weeks. It reports on events in the spatial industry in Asia and events outside the region which will impact on Asia.