Alcatel Alenia Space will provide the Defense User Ground Segment for the Cosmo-Skymed earth observation program to the French Ministry of Defense, Alcatel announced.

The 32 million Euro ($38.3 million) contract from the Italian Space Agency, which acts as a procurement agency for the Italian and French Ministries of Defense, is part of the Italian inter-governmental agreement to ensure interoperability and data exchange between Cosmo-Skymed and the French Helios 2 system. The equipment will be installed in the French Ministry of Defense military center of Creil.

Cosmo-SkyMed is part of ORFEO, a dual-use earth observation satellite network, developed jointly between France and Italy. The system consists of two satellites equipped with advanced electro-optical payloads, known as Pleiades, and four satellites equipped with a synthetic aperture radar , known as Cosmo-Skymed.