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Telespazio Germany Wins ESA Operations Deal

By Mark Holmes | March 31, 2021

An illustration representing ESA’s Biomass mission. Photo: ESA

Telespazio Germany has won a new European Space Agency (ESA) contract, the company announced March 31. It will provide the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) preparation and operations engineering services for ESA’s Biomass and FLEX missions. The contract runs until at least the end of 2024.

Earth Observation missions Biomass (Earth Explorer 7) and FLEX (Earth Explorer 8) are part of ESA’s Living Planet Program, which aims to help researchers and scientists to better understand the global carbon cycle and reveal new findings on the Earth’s forests and vegetation. By 2022, ESA’s Biomass Earth Explorer satellite – for which Leonardo and Thales Alenia Space will supply key equipment – will provide a global map of the amount of carbon stored in the world’s forests and will reveal the condition of forests both on and subsurface.

“The proposal combined all the best components from a wide range of service models that Telespazio Germany implements, at ESOC, DLR and EUMETSAT. This is the first time that ESOC is entrusting the responsibility for complete service teams for mission preparation and operations to a single service provider,” Paul Bearman, head of Systems Engineering Division, Telespazio Germany said in a statement.