Telespazio VEGA UK heads a consortium that provides the current operational service to monitor the quality of Earth Observation (EO) instrument data from European Space Agency (ESA) satellites and selected third party missions. Telespazio VEGA has been involved in the field of data quality for ESA missions for over 15 years and in 2008, won the first phase of the multi-million contract to deliver this innovative service for ESA. Over the years the service has expanded to draw in many other companies and organisations and has evolved to encompass new EO missions and initiatives to respond to the evolving needs of the Sensor Performance, Products and Algorithms section.
The service is delivered offsite from ESRIN using a distributed service model. At its core, the IDEAS+ service:
- Operates all QC, Cal/Val and support activities that can be made operational.
- Provides support to other ESRIN mission areas for all operational issues that are within SPPA office responsibilities
- Is responsible for maintaining QC and analysis tools
- Is responsible for maintaining and evolving ground segment processors
- Evolves the SPPA operations so as to achieve lower costs, greater efficiency, and standardization
- Prepares Product Quality Information available to end users and provides support to user queries
The service has also expanded to include:
- Reprocessing
- Cal/Val co-ordination activities
- Certain Expert Support Laboratories with algorithm development, verification and sensor calibration roles.
- Support to LTDP activities
- Maintenance of ESA-GMQ related web pages
- ALOS MMFI evolution
As the “Quality Centre” in the diagram below, IDEAS+ provides all of the services, interfaces and support the ESA SPPA group required to achieve their vision of data quality as delivered via the various mission Quality Working Groups
The service supports the following missions:
- ERS-1/2
- ENVISAT
- Cryosat-2
- SMOS
- GOCE
- Swarm
- ADM-Aeolus
- Cryosat-2
- ALOS (PALSAR, PRISM & AVNIR-2)
- JERS (SAR and optical)
- SPOT (low level IPF involvement)
- SeaWifs
- MODIS
- MOS
- AVHRR
- SEASAT
- CZCS
- NIMBUS