European Space Agency signs managed network contract with Interoute

ESA needs next generation network to deal with next generation satellite data streams

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a contract with telecommunications provider Interoute for the provision of a fully managed network service.

The service will use Interoute's Multi-protocol Label Switched (MPLS) WAN to connect ESA sites across Europe and Canada that store data from ESA's earth observation (EO) satellites.

ESA's head of EO Ground Segment Strategy Management Office, M Eugenia Forcada-Arregui, said: "We need an efficient and secure, large bandwidth network to archive and distribute data from both current and future EO satellite missions."

ESA's head of ICT services for the European Space Research Institute, J Antonio Rodríguez-Vázquez, explained: "Although we don't have a big requirement for bandwidth to download data from the current generation of satellites, the new network service will prepare us for the launch of the Global Monitoring, Environment and Security (GMES) satellites."

GMES is expected to be fully operational by 2014.

"The GMES programme will use a new generation of satellites with a different magnitude of data feed – we're talking about terabytes of data daily here," said Rodríguez-Vázquez.

The new infrastructure will also enable the ESA to process satellite data in real-time before distributing it to end users, something which its current network is unable to do.