Partnership seeks to deliver highway for space data

A €275m (£238m) public–private partnership contract signed with Astrium means that ESA is moving ahead with an independent, European satellite system that will speed up the transmission of large quantities of data beginning in 2014.

According to a statement, the European Data Relay System’s (EDRS’s) two telecommunication payloads in geostationary orbit will enable real-time broadband, bi-directional data relay between Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and an associated ground segment. This, in turn, will provide a telecommunications network that is claimed to be fast and reliable.

Currently, LEO satellites can only be reprogrammed and images can only be received when the satellites pass over a specific geographic location with a dedicated ground station.

With EDRS in place, Earth observation satellites could be re-programmed in near real-time and will be able to perform quicker data transfers and transmit for longer periods.

This will be important, for example, in the response of emergency services during a natural disaster, where satellite imagery can rapidly provide crisis mapping for better coordination on the ground.