In Toulouse, France, at the Airbus Defense & Space facilities engineers and technicians are performing the final tests on Eutelsat’s EB9B telecommunications satellite and its hosted payloads EDRS-A and the Italian space agency ASI’s Opportunity Payload.

EDRS stands for European Data Relay System and has been designed to provide Europe with a fast and reliable extension to its telecommunications network.

EDRS-A is the first of two EDRS nodes and it will be launched on-board the Eutelsat satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2015.

This video explains what is EDRS and includes interviews with Magali Vaissiere, Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications,  ESA and Michael Wittig, EDRS Project Manager, ESA.