Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies (SPACE-SI) (SI)
The aim of this activity is two-fold: firstly, to establish and test implementation approaches for companies operating transportable ground stations to collaborate with small satellite operators in addressing commercial markets for EO data. Secondly, the activity will identify outstanding issues constraining the expansion of the prototype approaches and elaborate a road map to support European entities to benefit from the new EO market opportunities. Work has started by establishing relationships with at least one small satellite operator and two downstream EO data providers in order to elaborate efficient interfaces for data downlink and data delivery that will lead to customized ground station capabilities for low-latency access to EO data. As a baseline, NEMO-HD data will be used, but also data from UK-DMC-2 and Carbonite-2 are under consideration. Other potential data providers could include ICEYE, Hyperscout, SFL, GomSpace and ISISPACE. Sinergise and Earth-i are proposed in the baseline scenario as downstream data provider partners. Others could GeoVille, Cosine or C-Astral. A set of verification exercises will be specified and executed in order to identify and mitigate outstanding issues in acquisition and storage of datasets, rapid tasking of the ground stations and planning of downlinks from satellite constellations. The verification results will form a base for elaborating a roadmap for operationalisation.
The project consists of the following technical tasks:
