Thirteen minutes. That's how long it took aerospace engineers in Germany to see an image of a group of ships near the Brazilian coast. For the European Space Agency (ESA), it's a record. "The typical duration to get the image to an end user in Europe is in hours," says Michael Witting, ESA's European Space Data Relay (EDRS) project manager.
The image was the first proof-of-concept of Europe's forthcoming SpaceDataHighway, a high-speed satellite-to-Earth data connection developed by the ESA and Airbus Defence and Space, made possible by satellites such as the EDRS-A (above) being prepared for its launch on January 29. It sends information to Earth at 1.8 gigabits per second, more than 90 times the amount of data that an average internet connection can send in the same time.
To create the image, an ESA satellite acquired radar data of the area while circling in low Earth orbit. Further out, at 36,000km above sea level, a data relay device picked up the satellite data over a laser transmission link and beamed it back down to a ground station in Germany. There, engineers processed the picture within five minutes. Satellites typically send image data to ground stations near the North and South Poles, which they fly over every 100 minutes.
But because the EDRS is always in view of Europe, it can send satellite data directly to ground stations in Germany, Belgium and the UK. "It's like a TV broadcasting satellite," says Witting. "They're always overhead and rotate around with you."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
