Inuvik ground station in Canada

Copyright: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

In August 2023, forest fires raging in the Northern Territories of Canada, caused severe environmental damage.  

The Government of Northwest Territories (“GNWT”) declared a State of Emergency as a result of the extent and evolution of the forest fires in the area.  The wildfires had also seriously damaged the network fibre lines used for transferring the Copernicus Sentinel-2A and -B and Sentinel-5P data acquired at the Inuvik Station to the European mainland, where they are processed and then disseminated via the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem.

The recent modernisation of the Copernicus Ground Segment operations allowed swift and efficient mitigation of the situation, which was interrupting the transfer of Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-5P data to processing centres located in Europe’s mainland.

The transformation of the Copernicus Ground Segment, implemented between 2019 and 2022, demonstrated its resilience to efficiently deal with major contingencies. Swift adaptation measures, including rerouting data through alternative acquisition ground stations in Spain, Italy and Norway, showcased the flexibility of the new ground segment architecture and minimised the impact of the communication outage in the overall Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-5P operations, and in user data availability.  

This  case highlights the benefits of the new service-based architecture, relying on standardised interfaces across services and cloud-based infrastructure, as well as the efficient operations coordination and the performance of the industrial teams involved in the Copernicus operations. This incident underscores the importance of resilience and flexibility in satellite data operations.

The Inuvik Satellite Station operated by the Swedish Space Corporation, is situated in a strategic geographic location north of the Arctic Circle, allowing to acquire satellite data from Earth observation polar-orbiting satellites, from almost every orbit.

At present, Inuvik is part of the Copernicus operational Acquisition Services, contributing to the acquisition of Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-5P payload data.

As a consequence of the wildfires, the Sentinel data acquired at Inuvik (about 30% of the Sentinel-2 satellite data and about 50% of the Sentinel-5P data) could not be circulated, preventing their further processing and availability to users.  

Thanks to the flexibility of the Copernicus Ground Segment, the impact of this operational contingency was efficiently mitigated by reconfiguring the operations to downlink the data originally planned over the Inuvik Station to alternative qualified Acquisition Stations, and by using the data flow from the new Stations as input for the further data processing.

Sentinel-2A over the Inuvik wildfires

Copyright: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023)/processed by Copernicus Hub

The unavailability of the Inuvik Station was compensated for Sentinel-2 by the activation of Maspalomas Acquisition Service (in Spain, operated by INTA), and by Matera Acquisition Service (in Italy, operated by eGEOS), and for Sentinel-5P by the  activation of Svalbard Acquisition Service (in Norway, operated by KSAT).  

Owing to the harmonised ground segment interfaces,  the Copernicus Production Services could swiftly access and process the data coming from the new Stations, by reconfiguration of the input station interfaces.

Routine operations for data initially planned to be downlinked at Inuvik were resumed in the new contingency configuration only a few days after the start of the anomaly, and continued smoothly until the fire conditions allowed to repair the communication links and swiftly switch back to the nominal operational configuration, using Inuvik on 18 September 2023 for Sentinel-2 and 23 September for Sentinel-5P.

Sentinel-5p Carbon Monoxide plot of the Inuvik wildfires

Copyright: © SRON

The new service-based architecture, with operational industrial services (such as acquisition, processing or archiving services) interconnected through standard interfaces via the Internet, relying to the maximum extent on scalable cloud services, has strengthened the operations resilience and flexibility and driven the operations management towards a “plug-and-play” service operations approach.

This event highlights the benefits in terms of cost-efficient resilience of the transformed Copernicus Ground Segment operations framework when compared to the traditional model, initially implemented for Copernicus more than 10 years ago, relying on dedicated infrastructure, often deployed also at the station premises, and on one to one connectivity between the various centres involved.

However, the efficient response to such a major contingency is not only the result of a resilient architecture, but it is above all possible thanks to the commitment, professionalism and outstanding performance of the long list of people and industrial services involved in the Copernicus Ground Segment operations, and to their collaborative contribution.  

ESA also extends its gratitude to the teams involved in the recovery of the Inuvik Station operation following the fire’s containment.

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgment goes to the Industrial teams involved and led by the consortium prime contractors: SSC, KSAT, e-GEOS, INTA, Telespazio, GMV, CapGemini, ATOS, DLR and KNMI