Factories of Satellite Data. Remote-Sensing and the Physical Earth Sciences in France.

Drawing upon the experiment POLDER conceived in 1984, this paper explores how a system for collecting, producing, archiving and diffusing satellite data in support of different domains of the physical Earth sciences was constituted between 1985 and 2005 in France, a system that presented major departures from the one prevailing during the first 25 years of the history of space technologies. This system promoted the broad delivery and use of a specific form of satellite data, entailed a growing intervention of non-academic institutions in the data-handling and divided the scientific community into those who produce the data, those who consume them and those who curate them. It postulated that experimenters had no longer entire control of the experiment and that data were no longer their property. I associate this regime of practices with the introduction of remote-sensing techniques for observing the Earth - achieved in France mainly through radiometry. I finally suggest strong connections between the history of physical Earth sciences and these changing practices of collecting, producing, storing and disseminating satellite data