On October 2, 2007, a new satellite data receiving station of DLR's German Remote Sensing Data Center in Chetumal/Yucatan, Mexico, was inaugurated by the President of Mexico, President Felipe Calderon, the Mexican Minister of the Environment and the Governor of Quintana Roo.
In his speech, President Calderon highlighted DFD's cooperation with selected Mexican institutions as exemplary and expressly thanked them for their cooperation. For his government, remote sensing is a central information service that is indispensable for Mexico's sustainable development.
For DLR's German Remote Sensing Data Center, the ground station in Mexico is an important extension of its international station network and serves to complement its ground stations in Neustrelitz and Oberpfaffenhofen as well as in O'Higgins (Antarctica) and Ny-Alesund (Spitsbergen). In addition to mission tasks for the European Space Agency ESA, DFD also supports many international earth observation missions with the ground station. In parallel, data from German earth observation satellites will also be received in future.
The ground station will be operated year-round with the support of DFD's Mexican partners. In addition to the benefits for German and European earth observation missions, the joint ground station will also help Mexico in particular to access the various data sources and analyze the data to achieve a better position in international earth observation. In addition to the joint technical ground segment tasks, DFD will therefore also support Mexico in the future in using the data for geoscientific and environmental applications in Mexico. Cooperation with the Mexican biodiversity organization CONABIO, with which DFD has already been working successfully for years, will be particularly important.
