Proceedings of the Workshop - United Nations Office for Outer ...

EXPANDING GLOBAL REMOTE SENSING SERVICES 123be at risk and if the commercial satellites evolve into anextension of military functions more than as a service tothe general market, then the expansion of ground-baseddata and information services may be restricted.Yet, in attempting to define new missions in thepost-Cold War era, even previously highly-classifiednational security institutions are moving toward levelsof openness that were once inconceivable.197 It may alsobe that to justify their missions in the information age,maintaining a level of accessibility and visibility thatwas once unnecessary will become a practicalrequirement and will lead to an unprecedented era ofopenness. Time will tell. Finally, while this particulardiscussion is about emerging United States issues, itmust be noted that other countries are involved in SpaceControl-like policies198 and similar matters,199 makingconcepts like these of a more global interest.Establishing and maintaining long-term,coherent regional and global remotesensing data archivesLike the Cold War human spaceflight programs, theearly political rationale for remote sensing was todemonstrate technological superiority of theparticipating nations. This meant that the primary focuswas on the space segment where satellites displayedtechnical sophistication overhead. Satellites, likespacecraft that carried humans, became symbols ofnational preeminence and remote sensing nationsoffered data as an incentive for aligning with them.200And, to a large degree, it worked. This space-segmentfocus meant, however, that attention to the satellites'product, data, was virtually nonexistent. As a result, along-term, coherent regional and global approach to thearchiving of remotely sensed data has yet to beestablished. Data from numerous satellites haslanguished in uncoordinated, fractured repositories innations around the world.While enormous progress has been made indesigning, developing and operating remote sensingsatellites, an analogous effort for the ground segmenthas only recently begun. Some nations did, relativelyearly, recognize that their strength would be in theground segment and placed their national efforts ondeveloping it.201 However, it was not until this decadethe economic value of data has been recognized in boththe public and private sectors and has become theprimary driver for data-oriented organizational efforts.The emerging approaches are occurring quickly with astrong emphasis on intellectual property rights and dataprotection. Where the necessary focus is on relativelyshort-term interests like cost-sharing of publicly-fundedsatellites or generating revenue from private satellites,this is to be expected.However, data, unlike the wealth-generatingphysical products of the industrial age are not depletedwhen sold or distributed and can be combined withother data to make entirely new, also nondepletable,products. In many cases, data values shift fromeconomic to scientific over time.202 Therefore legal197 Consider, for example, the educational outreach role of thepreviously highly-classified National Reconnaissance Officehttp://www.nro.odci.gov/index.html and the on-line commercialinformation of the National Imagery Agency, formerly theDefense Mapping Agency. http./ / 164.214.2.59/nimahome.html198 Ha'aretz, supra note 17.199 Reuters, U.S.-Israel Satellite-Imaging Firm Plans BondIssue, Tel Aviv, Israel, February 28, 1999. Regarding aproposed commercial Israeli system, it was reported that,"governments [are expected] to be attracted to[ it] because itwas less expensive than developing their own militarysurveillance program, which could cost five to 10 times asmuch."200 For example, since 1975, nations receiving Landsat datawere required to participate in the Landsat Ground StationOperations Working Group (LGSWOG). Although still inexistence, it has yet to function as a true global network.201 1984 House of Lords Select Committee Report on RemoteSensing and Digital Mapping.202 This fact is demonstrated by the contract terms betweenNASA and Orbimage for the Orb-View2 satellite, also knownas SeaStar with the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor(SeaWiFS). In this contract, the Government procures spacebasedenvironmental remote sensing data for research purposesfrom a commercial operator. Researchers can receive data freelybut only after the data is at least two weeks old, when the initialcommercial value of the data has declined.