The value of these images lies in their incredible preciseness and detail. This takes the image file size into the gigabytes and leads to the key challenge for the mission’s ground segment: getting up to 100 GB of big files downlinked every day during a limited, four-hour time window.
That’s roughly twice the daily data volume that space telescopes like James Webb and Gaia transmit from the same orbit at Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With Euclid’s shorter ‘passes’ – talk time – with ESA ground stations, this has required the Euclid ground segment to become especially efficient to enable such a large flow from Euclid to Earth and onwards to science teams.
The value of these images lies in their incredible preciseness and detail. This takes the image file size into the gigabytes and leads to the key challenge for the mission’s ground segment: getting up to 100 GB of big files downlinked every day during a limited, four-hour time window.
That’s roughly twice the daily data volume that space telescopes like James Webb and Gaia transmit from the same orbit at Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With Euclid’s shorter ‘passes’ – talk time – with ESA ground stations, this has required the Euclid ground segment to become especially efficient to enable such a large flow from Euclid to Earth and onwards to science teams.
The first step was to make it possible to sustain a high data downlink rate of up to 75 megabits per second between Euclid and the Estrack ground stations to download all its data comfortably and efficiently within four hours.
If Euclid were to transmit data in the same way as ESA's Gaia mission, also orbiting at ‘L2’, it would hopelessly congest ground stations as it sends twice the amount of data.
To make it possible to beam so much data in such a short time, two of ESA’s 35 m antennas had to be upgraded in various ways. First, Euclid will be ESA’s first science mission at the second Lagrange point to use the higher frequency ‘K-band’ (26 GHz), which enables a higher data rate.
“Faster communication lines were installed between the control centre in Germany and the ground stations located in Spain and Argentina. And that’s just the start of the list," says Åge-Raymond Riise, Station Coordinator for Euclid.
The value of these images lies in their incredible preciseness and detail. This takes the image file size into the gigabytes and leads to the key challenge for the mission’s ground segment: getting up to 100 GB of big files downlinked every day during a limited, four-hour time window.
That’s roughly twice the daily data volume that space telescopes like James Webb and Gaia transmit from the same orbit at Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With Euclid’s shorter ‘passes’ – talk time – with ESA ground stations, this has required the Euclid ground segment to become especially efficient to enable such a large flow from Euclid to Earth and onwards to science teams.
The value of these images lies in their incredible preciseness and detail. This takes the image file size into the gigabytes and leads to the key challenge for the mission’s ground segment: getting up to 100 GB of big files downlinked every day during a limited, four-hour time window.
That’s roughly twice the daily data volume that space telescopes like James Webb and Gaia transmit from the same orbit at Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With Euclid’s shorter ‘passes’ – talk time – with ESA ground stations, this has required the Euclid ground segment to become especially efficient to enable such a large flow from Euclid to Earth and onwards to science teams.
The first step was to make it possible to sustain a high data downlink rate of up to 75 megabits per second between Euclid and the Estrack ground stations to download all its data comfortably and efficiently within four hours.
If Euclid were to transmit data in the same way as ESA's Gaia mission, also orbiting at ‘L2’, it would hopelessly congest ground stations as it sends twice the amount of data.
To make it possible to beam so much data in such a short time, two of ESA’s 35 m antennas had to be upgraded in various ways. First, Euclid will be ESA’s first science mission at the second Lagrange point to use the higher frequency ‘K-band’ (26 GHz), which enables a higher data rate.
“Faster communication lines were installed between the control centre in Germany and the ground stations located in Spain and Argentina. And that’s just the start of the list," says Åge-Raymond Riise, Station Coordinator for Euclid.
The first step was to make it possible to sustain a high data downlink rate of up to 75 megabits per second between Euclid and the Estrack ground stations to download all its data comfortably and efficiently within four hours.
If Euclid were to transmit data in the same way as ESA's Gaia mission, also orbiting at ‘L2’, it would hopelessly congest ground stations as it sends twice the amount of data.
To make it possible to beam so much data in such a short time, two of ESA’s 35 m antennas had to be upgraded in various ways. First, Euclid will be ESA’s first science mission at the second Lagrange point to use the higher frequency ‘K-band’ (26 GHz), which enables a higher data rate.
“Faster communication lines were installed between the control centre in Germany and the ground stations located in Spain and Argentina. And that’s just the start of the list," says Åge-Raymond Riise, Station Coordinator for Euclid.
The value of these images lies in their incredible preciseness and detail. This takes the image file size into the gigabytes and leads to the key challenge for the mission’s ground segment: getting up to 100 GB of big files downlinked every day during a limited, four-hour time window.
That’s roughly twice the daily data volume that space telescopes like James Webb and Gaia transmit from the same orbit at Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With Euclid’s shorter ‘passes’ – talk time – with ESA ground stations, this has required the Euclid ground segment to become especially efficient to enable such a large flow from Euclid to Earth and onwards to science teams.
The value of these images lies in their incredible preciseness and detail. This takes the image file size into the gigabytes and leads to the key challenge for the mission’s ground segment: getting up to 100 GB of big files downlinked every day during a limited, four-hour time window.
That’s roughly twice the daily data volume that space telescopes like James Webb and Gaia transmit from the same orbit at Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With Euclid’s shorter ‘passes’ – talk time – with ESA ground stations, this has required the Euclid ground segment to become especially efficient to enable such a large flow from Euclid to Earth and onwards to science teams.
The first step was to make it possible to sustain a high data downlink rate of up to 75 megabits per second between Euclid and the Estrack ground stations to download all its data comfortably and efficiently within four hours.
If Euclid were to transmit data in the same way as ESA's Gaia mission, also orbiting at ‘L2’, it would hopelessly congest ground stations as it sends twice the amount of data.
To make it possible to beam so much data in such a short time, two of ESA’s 35 m antennas had to be upgraded in various ways. First, Euclid will be ESA’s first science mission at the second Lagrange point to use the higher frequency ‘K-band’ (26 GHz), which enables a higher data rate.
“Faster communication lines were installed between the control centre in Germany and the ground stations located in Spain and Argentina. And that’s just the start of the list," says Åge-Raymond Riise, Station Coordinator for Euclid.
The first step was to make it possible to sustain a high data downlink rate of up to 75 megabits per second between Euclid and the Estrack ground stations to download all its data comfortably and efficiently within four hours.
If Euclid were to transmit data in the same way as ESA's Gaia mission, also orbiting at ‘L2’, it would hopelessly congest ground stations as it sends twice the amount of data.
To make it possible to beam so much data in such a short time, two of ESA’s 35 m antennas had to be upgraded in various ways. First, Euclid will be ESA’s first science mission at the second Lagrange point to use the higher frequency ‘K-band’ (26 GHz), which enables a higher data rate.
“Faster communication lines were installed between the control centre in Germany and the ground stations located in Spain and Argentina. And that’s just the start of the list," says Åge-Raymond Riise, Station Coordinator for Euclid.
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