LARGE EARTH OBSERVATION NEW SPACE ECOSYSTEM GROUND SEGMENT

Project Information

LEONSEGS

Grant agreement ID: 101082493

DOI

10.3030/101082493

Project closed

EC signature date 19 June 2023

Start date 1 July 2023

End date 30 June 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 2 850 941,25

EU contribution

€ 2 143 783,88

Coordinated by

GMV AEROSPACE AND DEFENCE SA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LEONSEGS (LARGE EARTH OBSERVATION NEW SPACE ECOSYSTEM GROUND SEGMENT)

Reporting period: 2024-10-01 to 2026-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Earth observation increasingly relies on a diverse ecosystem of public missions, commercial satellite operators, data platforms and specialist service providers. However, ground segment infrastructures are often developed separately for each mission and use different technologies, interfaces and operating procedures. This fragmentation makes it difficult to share infrastructure, combine data from multiple missions and provide scalable services. It also creates high development, operation, maintenance and training costs, particularly for start-ups and emerging New Space companies.

LEONSEGS addresses these challenges through a federated, multi-mission Earth observation ground segment prototype. The platform combines Ground Segment as a Service capabilities for satellite operators with automated services for Earth observation users. It covers flight dynamics, mission planning, monitoring and control, operations orchestration, payload data processing, distributed catalogue searches, satellite tasking and generation of value-added products.

The objective is to demonstrate that satellite missions, ground segment functions, data catalogues and processing services can work together through harmonised interfaces and automated workflows. LEONSEGS aims to reduce entry barriers for European New Space operators and service providers, while making Earth observation products easier to access for users without specialist knowledge.

The project contributes to European technological autonomy, interoperability and competitiveness by promoting modular ground segment services, exploiting Copernicus and commercial data, and supporting common interfaces. Its pathway to impact combines technical validation, user engagement, scientific research, standardisation, training, policy recommendations and preparation for future industrialisation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

LEONSEGS designed, implemented, integrated and validated a service-oriented prototype combining automated Earth observation services with multi-mission ground segment capabilities. The work followed an incremental process based on successive requirements baselines, engineering reviews and prototype releases. The final requirements baseline was frozen and made traceable to the architecture, interfaces, use cases and validation activities.

The prototype includes the main functions required to support satellite missions through a shared ground segment: orbit and event computation, acquisition opportunity analysis, planning and scheduling, operations orchestration, telemetry and telecommand handling, satellite monitoring, payload data processing, product cataloguing and dissemination. It also supports the complete Earth observation user flow, from service selection and request configuration to archive search, satellite tasking, product generation and access to results.

The final prototype release demonstrated an integrated workflow in which an Earth observation request requiring a new acquisition triggered mission selection, acquisition opportunity computation, planning and operational preparation. Simulated raw payload data were subsequently received and processed to generate and disseminate the requested product.

LEONSEGS supports metadata and content-based searches across Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat 8/9 and other data sources. Semantic searches consider characteristics such as cloud cover and vegetation, while a Fitness-for-Use Index helps identify the data that best match each request. The platform also retrieves meteorological data and generates provenance and processing-lineage metadata.

Services were implemented for areas in Spain and Austria, including vineyard mapping and monitoring, biomass estimation, archived image search, cloud-free composites, land-cover stability and thermal imaging. Validation covered functionality, interoperability, performance, concurrent requests, usability and product quality. The final assessment concluded that the targeted Technology Readiness Levels 5 and 6 were achieved in a relevant pre-operational environment.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

LEONSEGS advances beyond conventional mission-specific ground segments by combining ground segment operations and Earth observation service generation in a federated environment. Instead of requiring each operator to deploy a complete dedicated infrastructure, the prototype demonstrates how shared capabilities can be accessed as services and coordinated across multiple missions.

A central innovation is the connection between archive-based and tasking-based workflows. If suitable imagery already exists, LEONSEGS searches several catalogues, evaluates the results against user needs and selects the most appropriate data. If no suitable product is available, the same request can initiate the tasking of a federated satellite, followed by planning, data reception, processing and product generation.

The project also advances data discovery by combining traditional metadata searches with semantic content-based searches and explainable Fitness-for-Use indicators. Performance improvements allow these searches to operate efficiently over large data volumes. Other advances include on-demand cloud-free composites, land-cover stability analysis, multi-source vineyard monitoring, combination of satellite and meteorological data, and automatic provenance metadata.

LEONSEGS promotes STAC for catalogue access and the emerging STAPI specification for satellite tasking, reducing the need for custom interfaces. Further uptake will require scaling and hardening the infrastructure, strengthening cybersecurity and service management, connecting additional missions and providers, and conducting further operational pilots. Clear licensing, investment, access to public funding and continued standardisation will also be needed to move from the validated prototype towards an operational service.