The date has been set for the roll-out of the European Union's multi-billion-euro Earth observation project.

Zaria, Nigeria

The image shows Zaria and its surroundings where population use the river basins to farm tobacco and cotton. (Source: Deimos Imaging)

The same NOAA satellites that helped forecasters predict severe weather, such as the Moore, Okla., tornado last May and November's deadly Midwest tornado outbreak, also played a key role in rescuing 253 people from potentially life-threatening scenarios throughout the United States and its surrounding waters last year.

For ten days, 74 scientists and tourists were trapped in the Antarctic on board the Russian Akademik Shokalskiy research vessel. Strong winds had driven ice floes into a bay, blocking the ship's advancement. High-resolution satellite data provided by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) helped to assess the ice conditions at the location.

The image that best captures the raison d'etre of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) - which is holding its 10th plenary in Geneva, Switzerland, this month - is not a satellite image. Strictly speaking, the image doesn't even fall into the category of Earth observation; it is a rather ordinary looking graph from a PowerPoint presentation used by Barbara J. Ryan, director of the GEO Secretariat, at a workshop hosted by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in Ankara, Turkey, in November.

Russian cosmonauts will step outside the International Space Station later this month for a second try to set up a pair of Earth observation cameras after a cabling issue inside the complex cut short a spacewalk in December.