VEGA wins Sentinel-3 Payload Data Ground Segment contract

8 November 2010 – A VEGA-led consortium has recently been awarded the contract for the development and deployment of the Core Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-3 satellites.

VEGA, a Finmeccanica company, and its subcontractors ACS, Elsag Datamat and Werum, commenced work on the programme following a kick-off meeting on 28 September 2010.

The Core PDGS system is a critical element within the Sentinel-3 mission. It is responsible for receiving, processing and disseminating to users the data from the Sentinel-3 instruments, ensuring that these generated Sentinel-3 products meet the expected quality and availability requirements for the mission duration and ensuring long-term Sentinel-3 data preservation and availability to data users and service providers.

Sentinel-3 is one of the series of Earth observation satellites to be developed under the Global Monitoring of the Environment and Security (GMES) programme, a joint initiative between the European Community (EC) and ESA, and the first to be implemented and operated in conjunction with EUMETSAT. The first Sentinel-3 satellite is scheduled for launch in 2013.

Peter Young, VEGA’s Director for Space, said: “Sentinel-3 has sophisticated instruments for monitoring both land and marine surfaces, and therefore plays a significant role in monitoring the future health of our planet. VEGA is very excited at the prospect of working together with ESA and EUMETSAT on such an important programme. We believe that VEGA’s role as prime contractor for this major system development is confirmation of our leading capabilities in end-to-end ground segment provision.”

Further information
For further information, please contact Karen Rogers on karen.rogers@vega.co.uk.