The European Space Agency (ESA) launched the first part of a new space-based “data superhighway” into orbit Friday night, as the first node of a network designed to improve natural disaster monitoring capabilities lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The node, which is a part of the European Data Relay Satellite (EDRS) program and is known as EDRS-A, is a telecommunications satellite that lifted off on board a Proton rocket at 2220 GMT, or 4.20 am local time, Reuters and BBC News reported shortly after the successful launch.
Credit: ESA
The EDRS is a $545 million (500 million euro) project designed to use lasers to gather pictures and radar images of the planet taken by other spacecraft and beam them back to Earth. By doing so, it will ensure that experts keeping tabs on earthquake and flood activity will not have to wait for probes to pass over a ground station before they can transmit their data.
Instead, the new network of satellites comprising this data superhighway will be located higher in the sky than other probes, allowing those spacecraft to simply beam their data upwards to the EDRS array, after which the system will fire it back down to get into the hands of emergency responders far more quickly than had previously been possible.
Network can relay information at a rate of 1.8Gpbs
EDRS-A is a telecommunications relay satellite that will collect data from a pair of probes that were previously put in orbit and use optical transmission equipment to monitor the planet below. They will now offload their data to the EDRS-A, which will be positioned 22,400 miles (36,000 km) above the equator, and within 20 minutes, the information should be on the ground.
Reuters and BBC News report that the relay station will send and receive data at a rate of 1.8 gigabits per second, equal to sending the entire content of the books on a three-foot-long shelf wirelessly in one second. In addition to monitoring earthquakes and floods, the EDRS system will also watch for oil spills, piracy or illegal fishing activity.
EDRS, which has been in the works for more than a decade, is a partnership between the ESA and Airbus Defense and Space, a private-sector firm that helped the agency design and develop the satellite network. A second satellite, EDRS-C, is currently scheduled to be added next year, and additional probes could follow shortly thereafter. The ESA said that Friday’s launch will not be officially declared successful until they confirm that the satellite is operational.
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Image credit: ESA
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