Thales Alenia Space Selected to Implement WEkEO 2.0 Infrastructure

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo  (33%), announces the signature of the Provision of Copernicus WEkEO 2.0 Services and Operations contract with the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT),  representing the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Mercator Ocean International (MOI) and the European Environment Agency (EEA), all together called the WEkEO  Partners, for the provision of cloud computing and related services for the WEkEO 2.0 platform. This  system will replace the current WEkEO Data Information and Access Services (DIAS) financed by the  European Commission and will provide a fast, secured streamline access to data and products from  Europe’s Copernicus Earth observation program and other Environmental Services.  

The WEkEO platform is an important gateway to harnessing the power of key environmental space based data. Not only does it provide free and open access to data from the Sentinel constellation, as  well as data and products from the four Copernicus Services focused on environmental data (marine,  atmosphere, climate and land), it also provides free (and paid) access to powerful virtual processing  environments that allow users to transform data. Entrepreneurs, researchers or any interested citizen  can use the WEkEO platform to develop an added-value application, develop models and transform  data, or simply explore Copernicus space-based data and data derived from in situ technology and  models. 

The WEkEO v1 platform, today in operations with a Service Level Agreement of 99,70%, has been  successfully operated by Thales Alenia Space and CloudFerro since 2019 and has been deployed over  three countries in Europe (Germany, Italia and Poland) mixing private and public cloud infrastructures. 

The WEkEO 2.0 contract provides for the replacement of WEkEO v1 by a brand-new, state-of-the-art  WEkEO 2.0 platform, providing continuity and stability of the WEkEO services for the years to come. It  covers the “as a service” provisioning of the computing, storage and network virtual infrastructure as  well as data access and hosted processing capabilities. The new platform will offer enhanced 

capabilities to the WEkEO users, such as Serverless functions allowing to perform on-demand  processing close to the data and also, the hybridization with High Performance Computing (HPC) allowing to perform complex and massive high speed data processing. Thales Alenia Space will  seamlessly guarantee a smooth transition to current WEkEO users to the new platform by the end of  2023.

The new contract demonstrates the Service Excellence provided by Thales Alenia Space and its  partners for WEkEO v1, which is now used by more than 14,000 users, providing access to over 410  data sets from EUMETSAT and WEkEO partners. The new WEkEO 2.0 platform will benefit from Thales  Alenia Space’s Ground Segment product line policy, and in particular its GeoDataCenter solution, a data  processing and services platform specifically developed for new entrants to the Earth Observation  domain. 

Thales Alenia Space is the leader of the consortium composed of WEkEO v1 recognized players: CloudFerro, Orange Business Services, GMV as well as two new partners, CGI and MEEO. 

Bertrand Denis, VP Observation & Science Domain at Thales Alenia Space, said : “Thales Alenia Space is delighted to be once again selected by EUMETSAT to continue the operation of WEkEO 2.0,  confirming their trust in our capabilities to design, deploy and operate such advanced Data Information  & Access Service platform. This new platform will embed major evolutions which will enhance WEkEO  users experience, and will keep streamlining access to Copernicus, EUMETSAT and WEkEO partners  data and products. Completing our Space systems offering by cutting-edge solutions on Ground  

Segments is a key element of our growth strategy in the domain of Earth Observation, and we are proud to have EUMETSAT’s trust in this approach.”