The one meter shop concept: e-CORCE

The pressing need for dispatched information anytime anywhere has until now fueled technology and economy beyond any prospect. Needless to recall, mobile telephony success or GPS navigation kits come close to becoming standard equipment for any production cars. Space imagery is in turn close to meeting its “killing application” thanks to the advent of mass geocoded portals of information fully dependent on their ability to show the whole globe to the meter resolution or close for the comfort of the worldwide Intranet community. Space industry is at stake and is facing a new challenge, not only technical but also economical that could be called “the one meter shop”. The question now raised is: can we provide a massive and automated representation of the whole Earth with 1-m resolution and on a daily basis? The presentation will introduce the e-CORCE constellation project, and the disruptive technological avenues that are today contemplated for its realization. Based on a three-layer concept associating the virtues of low cost and simplified constellations, advanced decentralized telecom systems and information GRIDs tuned to the need of internauts, the revolutionary e-CORCE project is paving the way for a novel approach, integrating space and Web information handled in a unified shell.