Aerospace company Airbus, with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA), developed the Airbus SpaceDataHighway, which provides broadband connectivity services between the International Space Station (ISS) and Earth.

The Columbus Ka-band (ColKa) terminal has been installed and fully tested on-board the ISS, and a SpaceDataHighway satellite will start to relay data via a bi-directional link in real time between the ISS Columbus Laboratory and the Columbus Control Centre located at the German Aerospace Centre, near Munich, as well as research centres across Europe.

Owing to the SpaceDataHighway and the ColKa terminal, the ESA will benefit from direct and sovereign access to the ISS, thus increasing the operational flexibility and allowing more astronauts, scientists and researchers to benefit from a direct link with Europe.

This will also enable the ESA to create slots for ad-hoc experiment access and interaction with European astronauts, Airbus says.

“SpaceDataHighway is the world’s first laser communication geostationary constellation. It represents a game-changer in the speed of space communications, using cutting-edge laser technology to deliver secure data transfer services in near real-time. The system has achieved more than 50 000 successful laser connections within the first five years of routine operations.”

The ColKa data service provision has been contracted between the ESA and Airbus. As part of this new SpaceDataHighway service, Airbus has adapted its Ka-band inter-satellite link to ensure data will be channelled via the ground station at Harwell Campus, in the UK.

Airbus' satellites can connect to the ISS, as well as low-orbiting observation satellites at a distance of up to 45 000 km. From its position in geostationary orbit, the SpaceDataHighway system relays in near real-time to Earth the collected data, a process that would normally take several hours.

It, therefore, enables the quantity of image and video data transmitted by observation satellites to be greatly increased and their mission plan can be re-programmed at any time and within a few minutes.

“With SpaceDataHighway, Airbus is already serving four Copernicus Sentinel satellites on a daily basis and continues to expand its services to more customers.

"Airbus’ advanced optical Earth Observation constellation Pleiades Neo, with four 30 cm resolution satellites, are the next satellites to benefit from SpaceDataHighway’s infrastructure and will further optimise mission reactivity providing near real-time data delivery and reactive tasking capabilities,” the company says.