Thales Alenia
Space and Telespazio signed a contract for two
additional COSMOSkyMed Second Generation
satellites
December 15, 2020
Thales Alenia Space, Joint
Venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo
(33%), and Telespazio, Joint Venture between
Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%), forming the
Space
Alliance, have signed the contracts with the
Italian Ministry of Defence and with the Italian
Space Agency
(ASI), to launch the development of two
additional satellites and the upgrade of ground,
logistic support and
operational segments to complete the
COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation constellation
(CSG).
Thales Alenia Space is the
lead of a consortium with Telespazio and
Leonardo, within the overall COSMOSkyMed Second
Generation programme. Telespazio is responsible
for designing and developing the CSG
Ground Segment, including the security aspects,
as well as the Integrated Logistics and
Operations
(ILS&OPS) services, and Leonardo’s space line of
business provides specific satellite units.
Thales Alenia
Space is responsible for the design and
development of the four CSG satellites and the
end-to-end system
design, integration and commissioning.
Leonardo’s space line of
business contributes to the program by supplying
the star trackers (A-STR) for the
orientation of the satellite, Photovoltaic
Assembly (PVA) and sophisticated units that
process and distribute
electric power throughout the satellite,
maximizing its power efficiency.
The two new Satellites, to
be built by Thales Alenia Space, will ensure the
constellation completion and the
full operational capacity of the SAR (Synthetic
Aperture Radar) observation services provided by
the four
satellites of the COSMO-Second Generation
replacing the previous COSMO-SkyMed first
generation still
operative despite exceeding the satellite
lifetime.
The new satellites will
contribute to the continuous monitoring of the
Earth's surface, to safety-related
needs and to the management of natural events
including support to damage assessment
activities and
rescuing operations. They will complete the
constellation, along with the Proto-Flight Model
(PFM)
Launched in 2019 and the Flight Model 2 (FM2) –
currently under integration phase in Thales
Alenia Space
Assembly Integration and Test (AIT) Facilities
in Rome – and scheduled for launch at the end of
2021 with
a VEGA-C launcher.
"We are extremely satisfied
to have signed this contract, which will enable
the completion of the Second
Generation of COSMO-SkyMed,
guaranteeing a further leap forward in terms of
technology and
performance for the entire
constellation, consolidating Thales Alenia
Space's leadership in the Earth
Observation radar sector
worldwide," commented Massimo Claudio Comparini,
Senior Executive Vice
President Observation,
Exploration and Navigation at Thales Alenia
Space. “I therefore believe that it is
particularly important to
thank the Italian Space Agency and the Ministry
of Defence for their commitment to
the national space industry
in achieving this result. Keeping the entire
COSMO-SkyMed constellation at the
cutting edge by means of
two additional second-generation satellites to
be built is of paramount importance
to preserve the leadership
of our entire industry and its supply chain in a
constantly evolving space market".
“We are proud to confirm
the role of Telespazio in making such a
strategic asset and are grateful to the
Italian Space Agency and
the Ministry of Defence for the contract on the
third and fourth CSG satellites”,
commented Luigi Pasquali,
CEO of Telespazio. “The users’ community can
rely on the operational
continuity of the
COSMO-SkyMed system and benefit from the
evolutions and improved performances
achieved at both Space and
Ground Segments level thanks to these additional
two second-generation
satellites.”
The primary goal of CSG is
to provide a dual - civil and defense - user
base with Earth Observation
services through a broad
portfolio of products, obtained in various
operational modes of the SAR sensor, in
both narrow field and
ultra-fine resolution modes and wide field
modes.
The design of the
second-generation SAR sensor, together with the
flexibility features provided by the
Ground Segment, represent
an important improvement of the state-of-the-art
technology for the Earth
Observation systems based
on radar technology, in terms of image quality,
planning and image-acquisition
versatility, sensing
agility and ground-based updating and processing
capabilities, including data
exploitation.
The versatility and
electronic agility of the CSG SAR payload enable
a new operational mode, which allows
the simultaneous
acquisition of two areas located hundreds of
kilometers apart on the Earth’s surface.