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Department: International Ground Segment

The International Ground Segment department is working on the concepts, set up and operations of the DFD integrated ground segment. These payload ground segments are realized in a multimission context of the national missions TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, and EnMAP; the European missions ERS, ENVISAT, MSG, and Sentinels; and the international missions IKONOS, NOAA-Series, Terra, and Aqua.

The department’s activities cover the following main fields:

Conception and organization of the international ground stations as well as the multimission ground segment infrastructure for national and European missions.

Engineering and Integration:

• For the ESA Multi-Mission Facility infrastructure (MMFI), and also in projects for the GMES Payload Data Ground Segment
• Ground Segment System Engineering, for example for TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X and EnMAP, and the integration of processing systems in the data managment environment DIMS
• Mission-specific infrastructure, such as for the IKONOS regional operations center
• Processing facilities for specific earth observation applications like SOLEMI, ENVISOLAR and airborne remote sensing systems.

Operation of:

• ESA Multi-Mission Facility Infrastructure (MMFI) including the ERS D-PAF and the ENVISAT D-PAC as well as the ADM Aeolus Long Term Archive
• IKONOS Regional Operations Center for data reception and production as well as data reception and production in Oberpfaffenhofen for the NOAA and Meteosat meteorological systems and for the MODIS instrument on the TERRA and AQUA satellites
• Processing facilities for specific earth observation applications like SOLEMI, ENVISOLAR and the Eumetsat Ozone SAF
• Handling the request workflow and monitoring production and customer support for national missions.

At the same time the international ground station network, including data reception and TT&C capabilities, is maintained and operated at the following locations:

• Oberpfaffenhofen for IKONOS and meteorological data
• O'Higgins (Antarctic) for ESA ERS-2 and TerrraSAR-X / TanDEM-X
• Recife (Brazil) for NOAA AVHRR
• Chetumal (Mexico) for, for example, ERS-2, Landsat 5
• Ny-Alesund (Spitzbergen) in cooperation with GFZ
• Inuvik (Canada)