Serco awarded new contract to support EUMETSAT with Copernicus Data Processing Operations

Serco Europe has been awarded a new three-year contract (with two one-year extensions) by EUMETSAT – the European operational satellite agency for monitoring weather, climate and the environment from space. Serco will lead a consortium including CS Group - Germany and Terma to provide engineering support to the data processing systems for the Copernicus Satellite missions at EUMETSAT.

The initial team of eight engineers will support the operational Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 satellites, with the volume of work anticipated to double over the contract with the planned launch of the Sentinel-4, Sentinel-5 and Sentinel-7/CO2M satellite missions.

Serco, together with its partners, will be responsible for providing operational engineering support to the satellite payload data processing facilities. These data processing facilities provide the main functions for payload data acquisition, processing, instrument calibration, quality control, product validation, archiving and dissemination of data obtained from the Sentinel satellites as part of the Copernicus mission.

Guido Vingione, Space Business Development Director says: "This important new contract reinforces Serco’s capability to provide managed service solutions to satellite operations and strengthens our support to EUMETSAT and the Copernicus programme".

Copernicus is the European Union’s Earth Observation programme. Currently, the data coming from the two satellites in orbit are devoted to oceanography and global land application (Sentinel 3), as well as ocean topography (Sentinel 6), obtaining key measurements and data to support weather forecasting and to monitor sea levels and other key indicators of climate change.

Serco already provides a wide range of services to EUMETSAT, including real time satellite operations services to all the satellite constellations in EUMETSAT and other engineering activities supporting the satellite and ground segments.