Ground Segment Facilities of the European Earth Observation Program Copernicus at the German Aerospace Center

Abstract – Copernicus (former GMES, Global Monitoring of Environment and Security) is the European Earth Observation Program, conducted jointly by the European Commission, ESA, EUMETSAT and the member states. The space segment of Copernicus, the Sentinels series of satellites, will start to be launched early 2014, with the SAR imaging Sentinel-1 satellite, followed by Sentinel-2 and -3 in the same year. The core payload data ground segment is managed by ESA and established and operated by national partners. In this core ground segment, the DLR German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) was selected to install and operate Processing and Archiving Centers (PACs) for Sentinel-1, Sentinel-3-OLCI and for developing and operation of the Payload Data Ground Segment of th Sentinel-5 Precursor mission. Major data management functions and systems of these PACs and PDGS are based on DLR developments and facilities. Besides the Sentinel core ground segment, Copernicus also relies on the integration of national Earth observation missions and collaborative ground segment. Within the national collaborative ground segment services, DLR data acquisition stations in Germany and in polar areas will establish, acquire and process Sentinel-data, primarily to satisfy the need for near real time performance, as those in maritime domain awareness. The paper describes the DLR systems to be operated for the Sentinel ground segment and gives an overview of the collaborative ground segment and services to be established by DLR with national and international partner