Earth Observation Center

The Earth Observation Center is a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) aeronautical research facility located in Hatoyama, Saitama, Japan.

It was created as a part of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) Office of Earth Observation Systems.

[1] This information is also stored on magnetic tape data storage in the EOC's archives and is converted into simple images which are available to the scientific community (laboratories, universities, governments) as well as to the general public through DVD's.

The EOC conducted a three-month study for the monitoring of greenhouse gases lasting from January 2009 to March 2009 with the Izuki satellite.

The EOC translated this light absorption data into a chart and determined the change in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration.

The EOC will continue to use this satellite to gather light data in order to determine if the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gas is increasing (a root of global warming).

The facility has conducted a study on Earth's water cycle through a quantitative analysis of Arctic sea ice shrinkage.

- Advanced Earth Observation Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) was launched by NASDA in December 2002 but failed due to a faulty solar panel in October 2003.

- Satellite Probatoire d'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) was initialized by and is mostly used by the French organization CNES but is also utilized by the EOC.