Astrium’s Spanish expansion

, an EADS company, has entered into a joint venture with the

(ICC), the Catalan official mapping agency, and space services provider

. Sixty per cent of the company will be held by Astrium, while ICC and Hisdesat each hold 20 per cent of the shares.

The joint venture, Infoterra Servicios de Geoinformacion SA (Infoterra SGSA), will form part of the Infoterra Group, a provider of geo-information products and services based on Earth observation data.

The company plans to develop global monitoring for environment and security (GMES) services, applications for agri-environment and defence and security, and support international mapping projects. Using the joint resources, Infoterra SGSA also aims to develop datasets from airborne acquisition, as well as radar and optical satellite imagery.

With offices in Madrid and Barcelona, Infoterra SGSA will be the exclusive distributor of TerraSAR-X high-resolution radar data for the Spanish market.