Imagine you could get almost hot images of Earth from space , with a delay of just tens of second as an orbiting satellite returned photo to the ground . That ’s a dream that is one gradation closer to reality with the launch of a new European satellite .
On Friday , January 29 , the first constituent of the € 500 million ( £ 380 million/$550 million)European Data Relay Systemwas taken to orbit by a Proton rocket salad from Baikonur , Kazakhstan , a collaboration between the European Space Agency ( ESA ) and Airbus Defence and Space . At a height of about 36,000 kilometers ( 22,370 stat mi ) , the satellite will be parked in a unchanging orbit over Europe , and operate by Eutelsat .
This satellite wo n’t be taking figure of speech of Earth , though . or else , it is part of a new web of laser - communicating satellites , which will significantly increase datum transmission times to the solid ground , in this case a station atHarwell Campusin Oxfordshire in the U.K. , and two others in Belgium and Germany . This will be Europe ’s first optical communicating mesh .
" It ’s a form of broadband connection in space offering capabilities to impart a bombastic amount of information from Earth observation satellites down to Earth,“saidMagali Vaissiere , theater director of ESA ’s telecommunication and integrated applications air division .
The electrical relay satellite will communicate with others using a optical maser . ESA
At the moment , satellites in low Earth orbit must individually make contact with the ground to offload their data point when they pass off over a land station . This charge per unit of data point infection can take hours , days , or longsighted .
Using a relay race satellite , though , which is constantly in contact lens with Earth , the orbiting satellites can set down their information in space before it is directly institutionalise to Earth . What ’s more , this relay satellite uses laser communication to sing to other planet and the priming coat , much quicker than previous methods of communication .
This will appropriate for information transferral rates of 1.8 GB per moment , and it ’s estimate this could bring the metre between ingest an range and welcome it on the reason down to around 20 minutes , reportedthe BBC . Potential uses include almost real - prison term monitoring of disasters , in summation to track felonious natural process such as illegal sportfishing .
" We have already demonstrated quasi tangible - clip public presentation of below 20 minutes for bring monitoring information from the seashore of Brazil to the exploiter ’s desk , " Vaissiere told the BBC . " And with this capableness , the European Data Relay System ( EDRS ) may spread out up a new celestial horizon to what I would call quasi tangible time Earth observance . "
Harwell Campus in the U.K. is providing one of the ground stations for the internet . ESA / Harwell
This is the first “ guest ” of the EDRS arrangement , hollo Eutelsat 9B , although it is only in examination at the moment , with full operation carry in the summertime . A second node will establish next class , also parked above Europe , with a third plan for the Asia - Pacific neighborhood in 2020 .
While only two artificial satellite are capable of using these nodes for now , many more could make use of this capability in the nigh - future . For model , the International Space Station ( ISS ) is expected to make use of the advanced potentiality from 2018 .
And for people swear on data from satellite on the solid ground , this connection could allow for a service far advanced than anything in process at the moment , opening up new possibilities inspace utilization .
