[Satellite TODAY 07-20-10] Astrium Services subsidiary Infoterra has secured a three-year, 7.5 million euro ($9.6 million) contract from the European Space Agency’s U.K. Farnborough Multi-Mission Processing and Archiving Facility (UK-MM-PAF) to continue delivering an operational service that will support the download and processing of images from both the ERS and Envisat satellite space missions, Infoterra announced July 20.
    ERS and Envisat provide Spot and TerraSAR-X satellite data and imagery that supports the latest Earth observation research, operational applications and scientific understanding on climate change. Infoterra currently stores over eight millions images for the program.
    The contract also includes Infoterra taking responsibility for the downloading and processing of images from UK-MM-PAF’s Swarm mission to survey the Earth’s geomagnetic field. Infoterra will support the first phase of the Swarm mission, which will include the installation, integration, validation and testing of the ground-based infrastructure. The second phase will see Infoterra take responsibility for the archiving, processing, reprocessing and dissemination of the Swarm datasets to the Earth observation community.
    Separately, Astrium announced it has launched a new airborne terminal, AirPatrol, at the Farnborough Air Show in the United Kingdom. Astrium says the terminal is designed to provide end users with a lightweight, high performance communications module capable of operating in the most demanding conditions.
    The terminal, which operates over the Ku-, Ka- and X-bands, has been developed by Astrium Services’ Secure Satcom Systems. AirPatrol is compatible with all types of aircraft, including unmanned aerial vehicles.