- A consortium led by RHEA Group has won a multi-year contract with EUMETSAT to support its ground segment system engineering services, including Copernicus mission activities under development or in operations.
- RHEA and its partners will implement ground segment activities and provide follow-up support to the EUMETSAT team in the areas of systems integration and validation, covering all phases of the ground segment standard lifecycle.
PRESS RELEASE
A RHEA-led consortium has been awarded a multi-year contract by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) to support its ground segment systems engineering services, to guarantee stability of its team and the long-term perspective of its expanding workload.
Under the contract, the multi-disciplinary consortium will focus on the direct implementation of system engineering activities, providing support for the EUMETSAT team covering all phases of ground system standard lifecycle as defined by the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS). This will include engineering activities for requirements definition and early design phases.
Among the missions to be supported are EUMETSAT operational missions such as Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) and EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS), and EUMETSAT’s operational Copernicus missions: Sentinel-3 and -6. It also covers the Ocean Surface Topography Mission, Jason-3. The Copernicus programme is of strategic importance, providing a plethora of unique, free Earth observation data to Europe and the world as a whole.
Engineering support will also be provided to future missions as EPS Second Generation (EPS-SG), Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and new programmes such as the Arctic Weather Satellite (EPS-Sterna), which will make a significant contribute to the improvement of numerical models for climate change and weather prediction.
Dennis Landmann, Competence Area Manager Ground Segment Engineering at EUMETSAT said: “We are very much looking forward to working with RHEA and the consortium on this important support programme. As EUMETSAT enters a new era with new meteorological satellites being launched, expanding our satellite operations activities, we are strengthening our relationships with commercial organizations that can help us bring about significant change and improvement to what we do and how we do it. Successful collaborations, such as the one with RHEA and its partners, is crucial to support us in meeting the exciting challenges ahead.”
Aldo Barbieri, Business Director for RHEA Germany, said: “RHEA has a 30-year collaborative relationship with EUMETSAT and we are delighted to be supporting it with this very important ground segment system engineering service, which covers many different areas of ground segment activities, including requirements definition and maintenance processes, through to system and interface design, engineering activities for integration, verification and validation and operations of the ground segment. These are all areas in which RHEA has unrivalled expertise and we are pleased to be working with this consortium to further develop and support these systems.”
The contract has been awarded for a duration of 2 years, with three options each of a 1-year extension, potentially continuing the contract until 2027.
Press contact RHEA Group: Isabelle Roels
Main image: © EUMETSAT
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