Data Terra and space
Data Terra has been structured around satellite Earth remote-sensing data from the outset, making it a unique infrastructure in Europe offering one-stop access to satellite and in-situ data.
The French scientific community attaches special importance to data from space systems to observe the key parameters of the Earth system and its evolving climate at regional, continental and global scales. The combined use of multi-source data—from satellites, ground stations, sounding balloons, aircraft and oceanographic vessels—has a significant multiplier effect that is advancing knowledge about the mechanisms at work in Earth’s environment.
Close partnership with CNES
As Data Terra’s partner, CNES relies on the infrastructure’s data and services centres to process, archive and disseminate science products derived from its Earth-observing missions.
AERIS is the science mission centre for the POLDER, PARASOL, Megha-Tropiques and CALIPSO missions, and soon for MicroCarb. CNES has also tasked AERIS with processing and distribution of gas concentration products from inversions derived from IASI data. AERIS affords access to imagery from all satellites in the geostationary orbit arc via the SATMOS structure.
Theia is the mission centre for VENµS and operates value-added processing chains for Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data archived at CNES.
AVISO processes and distributes products from CNES’s altimetry missions and products combined with other missions, and is a data and services centre of the ODATIS data hub.
ForM@Ter develops interferometric processing services from Sentinel-1 data and ground deformation processing services from Pleiades very-high-resolution data. ForM@Ter’s data and service centres also specialize in processing and distribution of space geodesy products derived from GNSS/GPS and DORIS data, and gravimetry products derived from GRACE/GRACE-FO data.
DINAMIS provides one-stop access to high-resolution satellite imagery for the scientific and institutional communities.
Collaboration with international space agencies
In addition to this strong national base, Data Terra has forged multiple ties with international space agencies, through partnership projects with CNES (NASA, ESA, Eumetsat, JAXA, ISRO, ISA, etc.) and directly to develop processing chains and scale them up for pre-operational production. Examples of the latter include IASI atmospheric chemistry products with Eumetsat, SMOS ocean salinity products with ESA, CALIPSO/CloudSat DARDAR products with NASA, altimetry products with Jason, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 data for Eumetsat, snow cover products from Sentinel-2 and Hydroweb products for the Copernicus programme.
Satellite data services
Data Terra offers a range of services for users of satellite imagery and regularly adds to them. These include operationalization and implementation of new processing chains, on-demand data extraction from areas of interest, co-location of satellite and ground or survey data, visualization tools and support for users with real multi-disciplinary and multi-thematic scientific expertise.
