Brussels, 2 December 2022
The Commission welcomes the procurement of a new Copernicus data access service following the signature today of a contract between the European Space Agency and a consortium led by T-Systems International. This service will empower users with immediate access to extremely large amounts (petabytes) of earth observation digital data from the Copernicus Sentinel satellites constellation.
This new data access service will allow Copernicus to better serve its users with a variety of free data services on new and historical Sentinel images:
- Easy discovery, visualisation, download, and analysis of vast amounts of data will be possible;
- Users will benefit from a set of data processing tools made available to extract the information they need to conduct their public, private or commercial activities;
- Users may provide new downstream services using the resources and interfaces made available by this new service, hence enriching the Copernicus data space with a broader service offering.
The challenges our society and economy are facing require higher volumes of quality data to be easily accessible for immediate analysis. Copernicus has established itself as the largest provider of earth observation data and information needed to conduct informed public policies in many key areas.
This new contract is signed as part of the Copernicus activities delegated by the Commission to the European Space Agency. It builds on the experience gained with the launch in 2017 of the Data and Information Access Services (DIAS). The winning consortium is composed of a mix of European cloud and earth observation service providers providing innovative solutions with a strong SMEs participation.
Next Steps
The new service will be fully operational in July 2023 after a progressive phase-in period corresponding to the phasing out of the current data distribution service, leaving time for users to migrate and familiarise themselves with the new service interfaces. Copernicus is also pursuing full interoperability with the Destination Earth future data infrastructures as well as with Member States’ earth observation data infrastructures.
The Copernicus data will be made immediately available through industry-led standard interfaces.
Background
Copernicus is the earth observation component of the EU Space programme. This component is implemented in partnership with the European Space Agency.
Copernicus is generating petabytes of data and information on a yearly basis from its Sentinel constellation and environmental monitoring services. Fresh data deliver up-to-date information on the state of planet earth while the depth of Copernicus data archives allow for valuable trend analyses over many years. It is therefore essential that the full range of Copernicus data and information are disseminated to the users. As the data archives grow, it becomes more convenient and efficient not to download the data anymore but to analyse them where they are originally stored. Cloud technologies allow this versatility where the users have a large choice of options to benefit from the data generated by Copernicus: search, visualise and further process the data through fully maintained software environment while still having the possibility to download the data to their own computing infrastructure.
The new service contract which was signed by the European Space Agency, to whom this activity has been delegated by the European Commission, has a duration of six years with the possibility to extend it up to ten years. The overall value of the contract is almost €150 million. The initial size of the Copernicus data archive amounts to 34 petabytes and is expected to reach around 80 petabytes after six years.
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Copernicus must strive for digital excellence. We want Copernicus data to be easily accessible and usable. At the same time, we need a powerful data analytics environment to attract new users, in particular from non-space sectors. The signature of this contract today is a milestone towards achieving this.