|
The EDRS-A node
is the first building block of the European Data Relay Satellite
(EDRS), a "big data" highway costing nearly 500 million euros
($545 million) that will harness new laser-based communications
technology.
The EDRS will considerably improve transmission of large amounts
of data, such as pictures and radar images, from satellites in
orbit to Earth as they will no longer have to wait for a ground
station on Earth to come into view.
The EDRS-A node, riding piggyback on a Eutelsat communications
satellite, is scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on board a Proton rocket at 2220 GMT
(4.20 am local time).
EDRS-A, which is to orbit Earth at an altitude of around 36,000
kilometers (22,400 miles), houses a laser terminal that works
essentially like an autonomous telescope capable of locking on
to moving targets on Earth.
It will send data to and from Earth or between satellites at a
rate of 1.8 Gigabits per second, which is about equivalent to
sending all the data that could be printed in a one-meter long
shelf of books in one second, according to generally accepted
industry measures.
The EDRS will relay data on sea ice, oil spills or floods from
Europe's multi-billion euro Copernicus Earth observation project
to users in Europe, Africa and the Atlantic area, but its
services will also be available to other paying customers.
The EDRS is a public-private partnership between the European
Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus Defence and Space.
Pairing EDRS-A with the Eutelsat 9B satellite, which will beam
TV images to Europe, cuts down on costs for both satellite
operator Eutelsat and the ESA as they share the expenses of the
launch and joint systems.
A second satellite, EDRS-C, is to be launched in mid-2017.
Eventually further ones could follow, which could also be
coupled with commercial crafts.
"We are open to pairing a third EDRS payload with a future
Eutelsat satellite," Yohann Leroy, Eutelsat's Chief Technical
Officer, told Reuters.
(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Gareth Jones)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
|
