Data appendix
The indicator set with its sources, the source registers, the licences of every kind of material and the formats of the edition.
Contents
- ·Edition home
- ·Executive summary
- 1Earth observation is infrastructure and evidence
- 2Key findings
- 3Systems and sectors at baseline
- 4Risks and capability
- 5Continuity gap in public Earth observation data
- 6Readings from the other desks
- 7The 2027 agenda
- 8Systems in depth
- AMethodology
- BData appendix
- CReferences and record
- ·Complete edition, for print
B.1The indicator set
| Indicator | Value | Unit | Year | State | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Landsat 8 and 9 combined land coverage | 8 | days | 2021 | Reported | 2 |
| Landsat 9 orbit altitude | 705 | km | 2021 | Reported | 2 |
| Landsat 10 planned bands | 26 | bands | 2031 plan | Scenario | 4 |
| Landsat 10 planned revisit | 18 | days | 2031 plan | Scenario | 4 |
| NISAR coverage cycle | 12 | days | 2025 | Reported | 5 |
| NISAR average revisit | 6 | days | 2025 | Reported | 5 |
| Sentinel-2 swath | 290 | km | 2024 | Reported | 6 |
| Sentinel-2 stated revisit | 5 | days | 2024 | Reported | 6 |
| Essential climate variables listed | 55 | variables | 2024 | Reported | 13 |
| Tropical primary forest lost | 6.7 | million hectares | 2024 | Reported | 12 |
| Objects tracked in orbit | ≈40,000 | objects | 2024 | Reported | 15 |
| Active payloads among tracked objects | ≈11,000 | payloads | 2024 | Reported | 15 |
| Debris objects larger than 1 cm, estimated | 1.2 | million | 2024 | Estimated | 15 |
| Rise in GPS signal loss events, 2021 to 2024 | 220 | % | 2024 | Reported | 23 |
| NASA Earth Science, fiscal year 2026 bill | 2,153.0 | USD million | 2026 | Reported | 24 |
| NASA Earth Science, fiscal year 2026 request | 1,033.2 | USD million | 2026 | Reported | 24 |
B.2Global source register
The governed source set behind this edition. Each source keeps its authority, coverage, cadence and role; categories describe origin, not truth.
Domains bound by the register
- INF
- DAT
- CLI
- GOV
- FIN
- TRD
- ENE
- WAT
- FOO
- BIO
| Source | Category | Coverage | Period | Cadence | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USGS Landsat pages234 | national agency | global land | 2021 to 2026 | continuous | land imaging |
| NASA NISAR page5 | national agency | global land | 2025 | continuous | radar |
| ESA Sentinel pages6929 | intergovernmental agency | global | 2024 to 2025 | continuous | Copernicus missions |
| European Commission pages7810 | EU institution | EU and global | 2026 | continuous | policy and access |
| WRI release12 | research institute | tropics | 2024 | annual | forest loss |
| GCOS and C3S pages111314 | international programme | global | 2021 to 2024 | periodic | climate variables |
| ESA Space Environment Report15 | intergovernmental agency | orbit | 2024 | annual | orbit |
| EASA and IATA plan23 | agency and trade body | global aviation | 2025 | one-off | navigation |
| Planetary Society analysis24 | non-profit | US | 2026 | annual | funding |
| Vendor pages18192021 | vendors | global | 2025 to 2026 | per event | fleets and platforms |
B.3Regional reading, Earth observation across ten clusters
Regional plates follow with the regional editions. This page gives the regional reading of Earth observation infrastructure and exposure in table form and ranks no region.
| Region | Principal hazards | Systems most exposed | Baseline evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | USGS and NASA missions; commercial fleets; licensing | land imaging, funding, licensing | USGS24; NASA5; Commerce22 |
| South America | tropical forest monitoring users | forest records | WRI12 |
| Europe | Copernicus; EU programme; aviation reporting | open data, policy, navigation | European Commission78; EASA23 |
| Eurasia | navigation interference reports in the Baltic region | navigation | trade summaries31 |
| Middle East and North Africa | navigation interference reported in aviation | navigation | EASA and IATA23 |
| Africa | users of free data; skills and computing access | access | regional evidence (not bound) |
| South Asia | joint radar mission launched from India | radar | NASA5 |
| East Asia | regional programmes and commercial fleets | supply, research | regional evidence (not bound) |
| ASEAN | forest monitoring and disaster users | access | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Oceania-Pacific | sea level and climate records | climate variables | ESA Sentinel-69 |
B.4Cluster card: free and open land-imaging chain
- public missions
- open data
- archives
- continuity
- Systems in view
- Landsat 8 and 9, Sentinel-2, NISAR, archives and catalogues
- Defining events
- Landsat 9 launch 2021; Sentinel-2C 2024; NISAR 2025256
- Couplings
- GOV → INF funding; INF → DAT open terms; DAT → CLI records
- Capability evidence
- open access and catalogue standards documented31617
- Gaps
- continuity of successors; archive volumes; ground-segment footprint
- Agenda items
- O-01 · O-05
Landsat 8 and 9 give 8-day land coverage and Sentinel-2 states a 5-day revisit [2] [6].
MISSIONS
Overlapping land imaging
Landsat has been free since 2008, and NISAR data are described as free and open [3] [5].
POLICY
Free and open terms
Landsat 10 is pre-launch with 26 bands planned; a draft request for proposal was released in May 2026 [4].
SUCCESSION
A 2031 target
B.5How countries appear in the Earth observation edition
Countries enter the Earth observation edition through the readiness chapters of their own national editions, on one card grammar. They are read against peer distributions and thresholds, never ranked.
| Card field | What it shows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| WEFH+B state | each core system against peer distribution bands | national edition |
| Couplings | the national dependency matrix | national edition |
| Risk objects | the national risk portfolio | national edition |
| Capability rungs | the national capability ladder | national edition |
| Evidence age | oldest and newest source dates | national source register |
Editions in the 2026 Baseline programme
countries and unions
clusters
flagship and sector
technology reports
How to read a country card
- Each system is shown against the distribution of its peers, with thresholds where they exist
- Couplings and risk objects come from the country’s own national edition
- Capability rungs record evidence, not a judgement of institutions
- Evidence age is printed, so older national data are visible as such
| Wave | Countries and unions | State |
|---|---|---|
| W0 | Canada | ISSUED |
| W1 | United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, European Union, Switzerland | PLANNED |
| W2 | Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Türkiye, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, African Union, India, China, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia | PLANNED |
B.6Licences
| Material | Licence |
|---|---|
| Text | CC BY 4.0 |
| Data | on the licence of each source; Nexus tables CC BY 4.0 |
| Figures | Nexus figures CC BY 4.0; third-party as credited |
| Maps | boundary source and licence printed on each plate |
| Metadata | CC0 1.0, as Zenodo publishes it |
| Third-party data, figures and text | The source’s own licence, credited where it is used; never relicensed |
| Nexus-authored text, tables and figures: CC BY 4.0 (SPDX CC-BY-4.0). Map plates print their boundary source and licence. | |
B.7Formats and provenance
| Format | Kind | State | What it is | Identifier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web edition | HTML | On this site | Draft in stewardship review; every value resolves to its source. | NR-XTECH-EOGEO-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 |
| Print edition | At release | A4 portrait · screen, print and archival PDF, signed with the web edition at release. | NR-XTECH-EOGEO-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 | |
| Indicator data | CSV · JSON | On this site | 16 indicators with unit, year, status and source; the machine-readable copy ships with the evidence bundle at release. | NR-XTECH-EOGEO-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE data release v1 |
| Figures | SVG · PNG | On this site | 4 on the web edition: headline figure, figure 1.3, coupling instrument, capability ladder. | FIG-XTECH-EOGEO-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-* |
| Slides | Not recorded | No slide deck is recorded for this edition. | ||
| Evidence brief | HTML · PDF | Not recorded | No evidence brief is recorded for this edition. | |
| Dataset with DOI | DataCite | At release | Concept and version DOI are minted at deposit; none is recorded yet. |
Provenance
- Edition pack
- The edition’s content pack (JSON), from which the print and web editions are built
- Evidence cut
- DC-XTECH-EOGEO-GLOBAL-2026-B0, closed 30 September 2026
- Reproducibility
- sourced values cited; analytical values reproducible from stated parameters
- Self-check
- 14 of 23 at evidence close; a fail on any item blocks release
- Review
- five passes scheduled before release (in Annex C)
- Publisher of record
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) for the Nexus Consortium
- Corrections
- Registry correction pathway; upheld corrections are published as notices with a new version
Notes
Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references
- 2USGS (ed.), Landsat 9 (mission page; launched 27 September 2021; 705 km sun-synchronous orbit; 16-day repeat cycle with an 8-day offset from Landsat 8; data at no charge). United States Geological Survey, Reston. Observation year 2021. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 4USGS (ed.), Landsat 10 (mission page; 26 spectral bands; 18-day revisit; 10 to 20 m and 60 m resolution; launch target 2031; draft request for proposal for the spacecraft on 18 May 2026). United States Geological Survey, Reston. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 5NASA (ed.), NISAR mission overview (launched 30 July 2025 from India; 12-day coverage; average revisit about 6 days; 3 to 10 m; free and open data). National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 6ESA (ed.), Sentinel-2 (mission page; 2A 23 June 2015, 2B 7 March 2017, 2C 5 September 2024; 13 bands; 10 m; 290 km swath; 5-day revisit). European Space Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 13GCOS (ed.), Essential Climate Variables (list of 55 variables: 16 atmosphere, 20 land, 19 ocean; last updated 20 December 2024). World Meteorological Organization, Geneva. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 12WRI (ed.), Global Forest Loss Shatters Records in 2024, Fueled by Massive Fires (release of 21 May 2025; 6.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest lost; nearly 50% from fire; Brazil 42%; data from the University of Maryland GLAD Lab at about 30 m). World Resources Institute, Washington. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 15ESA (ed.), ESA Space Environment Report 2025 (web page of 1 April 2025; about 40,000 tracked objects; about 11,000 active payloads; estimated 1.2 million debris objects larger than 1 cm; data to end 2024). European Space Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 23EASA (ed.), EASA and IATA publish comprehensive plan to mitigate GNSS interference (release of 18 June 2025; four workstreams; workshop of over 120 experts in May 2025; IATA reports 220% rise in GPS signal loss events from 2021 to 2024). European Union Aviation Safety Agency, Cologne. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 24Planetary Society (ed.), You just saved NASA budget (analysis of H.R. 6938; Earth Science USD 2,153.0 million against USD 1,033.2 million requested; NASA Science USD 7.25 billion; House 8 January 2026, Senate 15 January 2026; signature awaited on the page). The Planetary Society, Pasadena. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 3USGS (ed.), Landsat Data Access (products free to download since 2008; Collection 2 available from commercial cloud with catalogue metadata). United States Geological Survey, Reston. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 9ESA (ed.), Sentinel-6 (mission page; Sentinel-6B launched 17 November 2025; reference altimetry mission to 2030 at least; 95% of the ocean measured). European Space Agency, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 29UNVERIFIED, not opened: ESA (ed.), Sentinel-1D reaches orbit on Ariane 6 (launch 4 November 2025; fourth satellite of the first Sentinel-1 series), taken from search-result summaries; the ESA page returned an access error. European Space Agency, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 7European Commission (ed.), About Copernicus (Earth observation component of the EU space programme; six services; free and openly accessible; archived site). European Commission, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 8European Commission (ed.), Copernicus (policy page; nearly 800 European companies active in Earth observation with EUR 1.8 billion revenue; market projected near EUR 6 billion by 2033; 96% SMEs or startups; Commission statements). Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 10ESA (ed.), Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, about page (free access through quotas for individual use; larger use on commercial terms). European Space Agency, Paris. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 11Copernicus Climate Change Service (ed.), Global Climate Highlights 2025 (page only; the headline figures were not read). European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 14GCOS (ed.), GCOS publications index (latest status report listed is GCOS-240, 2021; earlier report 2015; report text not opened). World Meteorological Organization, Geneva. Observation year 2021. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 18Google DeepMind (ed.), AlphaEarth Foundations (blog post of 30 July 2025; 10 m embeddings; 24% lower error rate than models tested; over 1.4 trillion embedding footprints per year; vendor announcement, weak evidence, performance self-reported). Google DeepMind, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 19Google (ed.), Earth Engine (product page; multi-petabyte catalogue; over eighty petabytes stated; commercial use available and free for academic and research use; vendor statements, weak evidence). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 20ESA (ed.), ICEYE, Earth Online third party mission page (82 X-band SAR satellites launched for the ICEYE constellation as of 2026; constellation mean revisit at the equator 20 hours; access by accepted project proposal). European Space Agency, Frascati. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 21ICEYE (ed.), ICEYE launches four new satellites aboard Transporter-17 (release; launch 7 July 2026; 76 satellites launched in total; up to 16 cm resolution claimed; vendor announcement, weak evidence). ICEYE, Espoo. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 22US Department of Commerce (ed.), Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (licensing of private remote sensing space systems under 15 CFR Part 960 and 51 U.S.C. 60101 et seq.; tiers not described on the page). Office of Space Commerce, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Baltic and Nordic States submission to ICAO on GNSS interference (about 123,000 flights affected from January to April 2025; April figures differ across outlets), taken from trade-press summaries. International Civil Aviation Organization, Montreal. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 16STAC community (ed.), About STAC (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog; open source community; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; no adoption figures on the page). Radiant Earth and contributors. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 17OGC (ed.), About OGC (founded 1994; non-profit; more than 150 open geospatial standards stated; offices in Belgium and the United Kingdom). Open Geospatial Consortium, Wakefield. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
