CGI continues to build on its 12-year relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA), which is helping improve scientific access to data about Earth sent from space.
As part of a Serco-led consortium, delivering ESA’s Advanced Data Access and Processing Services for Collaborative Earth Observation Ground Segment (Ascend) project, CGI will provide engineering and cyber security services.
But its work on the Multi-Mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform (MAAP) within Ascend, which provides scientists with access to NASA and ESA Earth biomass data, is just part of CGI’s work in the space industry.
Supporting ESA, which is partly funded by the UK Space Agency, accounts for about half of CGI’s Earth observation work, and involves processing satellite imagery. It’s 400 UK-based staff, who are focused on the space sector, also support satellite communications companies from their operations in Leatherhead and Bristol.
Jaime Reed, vice-president of consulting services, space data platforms and applications at CGI, told Computer Weekly the supplier’s work with ESA is “predominantly environmental monitoring”, such as processing meteorological data. It is involved in controlling satellites, receiving and processing data from them, and providing the software onboard.
Specialist knowledge
Reed has a background in physics, with a doctorate in atmospheric physics that looked at how the atmosphere works and how it is measured.
He then worked as an engineer developing cryogenic coolers for satellites, before moving to Airbus, where he worked on satellites. “My background was in the space industry, designing and building satellites, and working on the data that comes from them,” said Reed.
He now applies his knowledge to CGI’s satellite and data processing work. “Most weather forecasts are highly dependent on data taken by satellites, which was what I was working on,” said Reed.
Reed said while CGI is a “big IT company” doing all the things a normal IT company does, it has specific expertise in the space industry.
Other CGI customers using space data include the Met Office, but most are relatively small organisations, he added.
Just over half of CGI’s space business is in satellite communications, and many of the big satellite companies are customers.
“We write the software that controls the satellites and we provide the managed IT services around that. It’s all datacentres really. The control segment of the satellite is generally all computer programs that are doing orbit predictions, moving data around, receiving files from the satellites and processing those files.”
Everything comes into datacentres and is processed and sent to scientists.
The first big deal between ESA and CGI was in 2012, with CGI maintaining the software that processes the data for its environmental monitoring satellite and research satellites.
Reed said the volume of data being received and processed has massively increased since then because “there are a lot more satellites being built by ESA and they are more complicated, turning in more data”.
Controlling data distribution
It is this dramatic increase in data that has led to CGI’s latest project with ESA, working on the Ascend programme, which Reed said is a starting point to look at new ways of providing data to scientists.
“The amount of data is becoming overwhelming and it is challenging to make the data available to users,” said Reed. “It used to be a case that researchers could just go to an FTP site, download some of the data and work on it at their workstation, but now you’re talking a terabyte for just one file.”
Everything is now moving to the cloud, using “scalable, cloud-based environments”.
A key aspect of the work today is enabling a collaborative virtual research environment, where rather than researchers downloading files, they take their expertise to where the data is. “They don’t have to transfer terabytes of files themselves. They bring their algorithms and then they can share their environments within that research environment with other researchers,” said Reed.
Collaboration is essential in the Earth observation field, with initiatives within ESA programmes shared with NASA, for example. “We can bring the UK-based and Europe-based researchers to collaborate globally with cutting-edge scientists around the world,” he said.
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