Introduction

An Open Skies Policy for data acquisition and access is important to ASPRS, the remote sensing and geospatial information user community, the U.S. commercial satellite industry, and the Nation for several reasons. The U.S. is currently a leader in high-resolution image technology, but cannot maintain that position for long without continued investment. Restrictions on acquisition by U.S. firms enhance potentially competitive positions of foreign-based efforts, where no such restrictions are in place to hinder the implementation of new technology. Further, the specter of an ever-changing regulatory environment, with the attendant uncertainty of access to the marketplace, will restrict capital available to implement further technology improvements within the United States.

Policy Statement

ASPRS: The Imaging and Geospatial Information Society, supports the unrestricted acquisition and widest possible distribution of data and imagery from spaceborne platforms.

Background

It is critically important to acknowledge the United States leadership in defining, formulating and establishing the policy and practice of Open Skies, and the remote sensing principles and policies contained in the following documents:

• The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, which guarantees remote sensing as a legal use of space and which shall be conducted in the interests of all countries and all mankind. See http://www3.un.or.at/OOSA_Kiosk/treat/ost/osttxt.html

• The U. N. Principles on Remote Sensing which recognize the right of a sensed State to have access to data concerning the territory under its jurisdiction on a nondiscriminatory basis. See http://www.un.or.at/OOSA_Kiosk/treat/rs/rstxt.html

• The 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, which requires: 1) the Landsat system remain an unclassified program that operates according to the principles of open skies and nondiscriminatory access; 2) data from any other civil land remote sensing system funded by the United States Government shall be made available to all users without preference, bias, or any other special arrangement; and 3) private system operators licensed by the United States Government must make collected data available to sensed States. See http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sge/landsat/15USCch82.html or http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c102:H.R.6133.ENR

• The Policy Statement on Data Management for Global Change Research (Bromley Principles) which state that full and open sharing of global change research data is fundamental. See http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/BitsOfPower/box3.5.html or
  http://www.gcrio.org/USGCRP/DataPolicy.html

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(06 October 1999)