ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9316
Open Date: 02/05/2018
Closing Date: 13/06/2018 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 18.187.02
Prog. Ref.: Earthnet
Budget Ref.: E/0078-00 – Earthnet
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU+SI+CA
Tender Type: C
Price Range: > 500 KEURO
Products: Ground Segment / Mission Operations / Other
Techology Domains: Space System Software / Earth Observation Payload Data Exploitation / Data and Information Processing and Exploitation
Establishment: ESRIN
Directorate: Directorate of EO Programmes
Department: EO Mission Management & GS Department
Division: EO Mission Mngmt & Product Quality Div.
Contract Officer: Frigot, Emma
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 02/05/2018
Update Reason: Tender issue

Earthnet Programme provides the framework for integrating non-ESA missions (Third Party Mission) in the overall ESA Earth Observation (EO) strategy, allowing data access and supporting the development of new research and applications. Earthnet has continuously integrated over the last years an increasing number of TPMs, at a constant level of funding: in the current Earthnet Phase, data from 28 missions with 56 individual satellites (historic and operational missions) have been maintained, transferred where relevant to LTDP and made available to users. 50% of those missions are of European origin, the other 50% are international, mainly from Canada, US, Japan, India, South Korea.In recent years, the Earth Observation capacity is growing with the multiplication of national, private, or Agencies missions; in particular the domain of high resolution optical sensors and SAR (synthetic Aperture Radar) is rapidly accelerating. The New Space players are now playing an important role in the EO international strategy. The global space panorama and the EO sector in particular have evolved into a highly dynamic and competitive environment. Some of these new missions are potential candidates for Earthnet TPM or for Copernicus Contributing Missions. As EO system Architect in Europe, ESA is willing to assess the quality and the suitability of these missions. Also, this involvement in early quality assessment would allow toestablish a dialogue with the mission operator in order to improve the overall coherence of the EO system. This is in line with the objective of the Earthnet program: Earthnet will continue to foster the cooperation with other Space Agencies and mission operators to provide data access to all active and already approved TPMs being implemented right now and for which agreements for the future are being anticipated. In particular, the aspect related to quality in general (data content, calibration, validation, characterisation), followingthe QA4EO (Quality Assurance For Earth Observation) guidelines, being a major component of the system should be carefully assessed. In addition, there is a growing need for Earthnet to strengthen the European capacity in assessing EO data quality in a multi-mission environment. This horizontal core role of Earthnet will be essential to allow interoperability across missions to foster synergies, to build Cal/Val capacity and knowledge in the TPMs and to facilitate future applications. In this context, this activity isa pilot that aims at providing a cluster of expertise in various domains in order to perform quality assessment and the related capacity building in TPM framework especially for future missions. The domains of expertise cover Atmospheric missions, Optical Sensor and SAR domains. The cluster of expertise will haveto provide technical reports on data quality from various missions. Some missions arealready identified, some other missions will be identified in the course of the project. In addition, specific studies related to data quality applicable to across missions will be asked (e.g. geometric quality in orthorectification of very high resolution data).

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