The Earth and Planetary Image Facility is a multi-disciplinary laboratory at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Our research focuses on the use of remote sensing for a variety of applications and on advancing the development of currently available remote sensing methods. The students in the laboratory come from a variety of academic backgrounds, including geography, electro-optics, geology, electrical engineering, bio-medical engineering, computer sciences, agriculture and more.
The laboratory is affiliated with NASA's Regional Planetary Image Facilities program and hosts an active archive of maps and remotely sensed images from the Solar System.
Cutting edge technologies are used and developed in our research programs.
Our HRPT receiving station enables us to download real-time information from AVHRR, NOAA-12,14,15,16,17 satellites. In addition, we can receive information from SeaWiFS from the Orbview-2 satellite as well as FY1C,D imaging. The receiving station is fully equipped with a MEOS Linux receiving station and a tracking computer.
In addition, there is also a dedicated ground station with VHF, UHF and S BAND for our BGUSAT nano-satellite.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and EPIF established a regional support office (RSO) for UN-SPIDER, United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response.