SSC’s Punta Arenas Satellite Station in Chile.

The European Space Agency (ESA) awarded SSC expanded satellite ground station contracts to support the Copernicus program, the company announced Wednesday. 

These new contracts add SSC’s Punta Arenas Satellite Station in Chile to the Copernicus ground network. SSC has supported the Copernicus program since 2020. Copernicus is Europe’s Earth observation satellite program to provide data on climate change, the environment, security, and more. 

Under the new contracts, SSC is supporting the commissioning phase of the Sentinel-1C satellite that launched in December, from SSC’s Inuvik Satellite Station in Canada’s Arctic region, as well as additional passes to be covered via Esrange Space Center in Sweden. SSC will support Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1C from Inuvik Ground Station until November 2026.

The company will also support the commissioning phase of the new Sentinel-2C satellite via the Inuvik Ground Station and Punta Arenas Satellite Station, and routine operations for Sentinel-2B and Sentinel-2C from Punta Arenas.

“Policy makers, researchers, commercial to private users, as well as the global scientific community can benefit in many ways from the data and information provided by Copernicus. Hence, we are proud of our partnership and pleased that ESA has chosen to expand our collaboration. And we prepare for it to grow even further,” says Nicholas Priborsky, president of Division Connect at SSC.