ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use

ESA’s Payload Data Handling andPreservation

Damiano Guerrucci, Joost van Bemmelen, Roberto Biasutti, Jose Antonio Rodriquez Vazquez, Stefano Tatoni, Andrea SchedidBruno Schmitt, Nicola Lorusso, Jon Earl

ESAW June2017 – ESOC, Darmstadt Germany

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 2

Overview

• Introduction

• Earth Observation Data Disseminated

• Managed Missions

• Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS)

• Mission Main Elements

• Deployment Strategy

• Success Stories

• Data Handling

• Integration of Services and Components

• Modern Data Dissemination

• Conclusion

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 3

Earth Observation Data Disseminated by ESA

ESA disseminates Earth observation

(EO) products and auxiliary data from

a number of missions and instruments:

• ESA EO Live and Heritage Missions

• Third Party Missions (TPMs)

• ESA Campaigns

• the Copernicus Space Component

(CSC)

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 4

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 5

ESA Earth Observation – ERS and Envisat

HeritageESA's two European Remote Sensing (ERS) satellites, ERS-1 and –2, were launched into the same orbit in 1991 and 1995 respectively. Their payloads included a synthetic aperture imaging radar, radar altimeter and instruments to measure ocean surface temperature and wind fields. ERS-2 added an additional sensor for atmospheric ozone monitoring. The ERS-1 mission ended on 10 March 2000 and ERS-2 was retired on 05 September 2011.

Envisat was ESA's successor to ERS. Envisat was launched in 2002 with 10 instruments aboard and at eight tons is the largest civilian Earth observation mission.More advanced imaging radar, radar altimeter and temperature-measuring radiometer instruments extend ERS data sets. This was supplemented by new instruments including a medium-resolution spectrometer sensitive to both land features and ocean colour. Envisat also carried two atmospheric sensors monitoring trace gases.The Envisat mission ended on 08 April 2012, following the unexpected loss of contact with the satellite.

https://earth.esa.int/

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 6

ESA Earth Explorers – Core Missions

Next

PastThe Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer was launched on 17 03 2009 and ended on 11 11 2013. GOCE provided high spatial resolution gravity-gradient data to improve global and regional models of Earth's gravity field and geoid.

The prime aim of the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission is to demonstrate measurements of vertical wind profiles from space. The mission employs a high-performance Doppler wind lidar based on direct-detection interferometrictechniques. ADM-Aeolus is scheduled for launch at in January 2018.

Earth Clouds Aerosols and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) will improve the representation and understanding of Earth's radiative balance in climate and numerical forecast models.

The Biomass mission will provide information about the state of our forests and how they are changing. Carrying the first P-band synthetic aperture radar in space, Biomass will provide measurements to determine the amount of biomass and carbon stored in forests, thereby improving our understanding of the carbon cycle.

https://earth.esa.int/

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 7

ESA Earth Explorers – Opportunity Missions

Flying

Future

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched on 2 11 2009, is exploiting an innovative two-dimensional interferometer to acquire brightness temperature observations at L-band (1.4 GHz). These observations translate into information on the moisture held in soil and salinity in the surface layers of the oceans, which are needed to further our understanding of Earth's water cycle.

Launched on 8 04 2010, is measuring fluctuations in the thickness of ice on both land and sea determine how Earth's ice is changing. This information is leading to a better understanding of the relationship between ice and global climate. CryoSat carries an innovative SAR/interferometric radar altimeter.

Launched on 22 11 2013, SWARM is providing the best-ever survey of the geomagnetic field and its temporal evolution. The geomagnetic models resulting from the mission will provide new insights into Earth’s interior. This information will lead to a better understanding of atmospheric processes, and also have practical applications in areas such as space weather and radiation hazards.

The Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) will map vegetation fluorescence to quantify photosynthetic activity. This information will improve our understanding of the way carbon moves between plants and the atmosphere and how photosynthesis affects the carbon and water cycles. It will also lead to better insight into plant health and stress.

https://earth.esa.int/

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 8

ESA’s Third Party Missions

ESA uses its multi-mission ground systems to acquire, process, archive and

distribute data from other satellites - so called Third Party Missions. The data from

these missions is distributed under specific agreements with the owners or

operators of the mission, following the ESA Data Policy.

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 9

PDGS Elements

PDGS

Ground Station

Processing Facility

Calibration and Data Quality

Facility

Planning Facility

Dissemination Facility

User Service

Flight Operations

Segment(FOS)

External Data Provider / Processing

Preservation

Reprocessing

Monitoring and Control Facility

Users community

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 10

PDGS Deployment Strategy

A balanced utilisation of above models to:

• Reduce insourcing

• Removing dependencies

• Lower cost

• Standardised interfaces

• Reuse of knowledge

• Modularity different by missions

Implementing mission PDGSs on a per mission basis

Multi mission system by

interconnecting customised

generic subsystems

Generic services elements integrated into one managed service process

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 11

PDGS Generic Services Model

Generic services are delivering

following operational functions:

• Mission management & planning

• Data ingestion

• Data processing

• Data re-processing

• Data preservation

• Data quality control

• Data Circulation

• Product dissemination

• Users management

• Ground Segment Monitoring

• Statistics and reporting

• Catalogue management

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 12

Success stories

- Data Handling - Third Party Mission Data Handling Facility (DHF)

- Integration of services – Preservation Element Front End (PEFE)

- Modern data dissemination - ALOS PDGS migration

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 13

TPM-DHF – Functional Overview

• The TPM DHF is a PDGS facility consisting

of:

• Data Reception and Circulation

• Data Conversion (products

repackaging)

• Catalogue – Simple catalogue

function to users and exposed

interface for external catalogues

• Online Access (HTTP and FTP)

• Bulk Dissemination for large

quantities of stored data

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 14

PEFE, single front end to the preservation element

14

• The PE-FE forms part of an end-to-end chain for a MISSION, and is shared resource across multiple MISSIONs, i.e.

Cryosat-2, SMOS, SWARM, GOSAT, OceanSat-2

• Circulation of systematically produced data from the MISSION distribution system to the archival service within the

preservation element.

• Reverse circulation of the Preservation Confirmation Report from the Preservation Element to the MISSION

monitoring system.

• Support for the Data Repatriation flow from the Preservation Element to the MISSION distribution system.

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 15

ALOS – JAXA’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite

The ALOS Data European Node (ADEN) Ground Segment, managed by ESA, provided the

European and African regional elements for the Japanese remote sensing satellite ALOS

(Jan 2006 – May 2011). The other nodes were under the responsibility of NOAA, AUSLIG and

NASDA.

At the end of the ALOS satellite operations, the ADEN facilities (Tromsoe, Matera and ESRIN)

had more than 800 TB of data coming from the 2 ALOS optical sensors (AVNIR-2 and

PRISM) and from the ALOS radar sensor (PALSAR). The data were processed only under

user request to the higher levels.

In 2014 there was the need to update the ALOS processors in order to be aligned to JAXA

ones.

In order to reduce the maintenance cost of the ALOS ground segment (and considering that

most of the original PDGS was not used anymore in phase F), it has been decided to

migrate it from Mission Specific (ADEN) to the Generic Ground Segment.

A data repatriation from the centres was performed, followed by a consolidation exercise.

More than 50,000 segments were successfully archived.

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 16

ALOS – Migration to generic PDGS

Authentication(EO-SSO)

Data Access(virtual)

Data Access(on line)

Optical request

Product Data Catalogue PALSAR

request

Data Processing(PFM for FBD, FBS, PLR)

Data Processing(PFM for WB1)

ESA PALSAR

processor

ESA PALSAR

processor

On the fly dynamic processing

• Data downlinked from mission, converted

to EO-SIP (OGC standard compliant) and

ingested for dissemination

• The user can download optical and radar

data from the same platform.

• ALOS optical data (AVNIR-2, PRISM) were

systematically processed and controlled.

They will be available this year for

immediate download as geo-corrected

(Lv1.C)

• ALOS radar data, are available at different

processing levels, via On-The-Fly (OTF)

processing:

starting from PALSAR (FBS, FBD, PLR and

WB1 modes) RAW data (Lv.1.0) the system

automatically generated Lv. 1.1 (SLC) and

1.5 (PRI - radiometrically and geometrically

corrected).

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 17

Conclusions

Migration to a common dissemination infrastructure has been performed with the

following goals:

- reduce the number of elements to maintain

- reduce operational costs

- improve data access timeliness

Integration with common services has been beneficial for:

- reduction of operational cost

- streamlined processes

- industrial policy

ESA UNCLASSIFIED - For Official Use ESA | 31/05/2017 | Slide 18

URLs:

https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/data-access/how-to-access-eo-data/earth-

observation-data-distributed-by-esa

Contacts:

Roberto.Biasutti@esa.int - TPM Mission Operations Manager

Damiano.Guerrucci@esa.int – PDGS Common Services

Jose.Antonio.Rodriguez.Vazquez@esa.int – ESA and TPM PDGS Operations

Contacts