For planet earth and beyond
An ESA project supporting the European Maritime Safety Agency´s (EMSA) Blue Belt pilot programme has successfully delivered space AIS data. More than 21,000 ships were detected and 14 million messages were processed during this demonstration.
For the first time, a Galileo payload has been activated directly from the ESA Redu Centre, located in the heart of Belgium´s Ardennes forest.
Another step has been taken towards making Europe an even more efficient competitor in the global satellite telecommunications market, with the testing of the new SmallGEO satellite platform at ESTEC, ESA's testing centre in the Netherlands.
The European Space Agency's Multimedia Van was on display at the ASMS Conference 2003 at ESRIN in Frascati Italy on July 10 and 11 for the first European Satellite UMTS demonstration.
Artemis ion propulsion system
ESA's currently-flying Artemis testbed
ESA's Artemis data relay satellite, controlled from Fucino (Italy) and with its mission control centre and gateway Earth station located at Redu (Belgium), is providing communications between the Jules Verne ATV and the ATV Control Centre in Toulouse (France).
A brochure on Artemis, covering the history and developments is now available for downloading.
The Artemis Satellite Team has been awarded the 2003 Space Operations & Support Award at the AIAA's Space 2003 Conference at Long Beach, California (USA).