Figure1 shows data flow and overview of EarthCARE Ground System between all GS elements including ESA, JAXA, and related agencies.

The EarthCARE satellite is operated by the Flight Operations Segment (FOS) of ESA's European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, which uses Kiruna's S-band station to send commands and receive telemetry.

Command plan adjustments such as CPR calibration operations will be carried out via the JAXA mission operation system. JAXA/MOS will also conduct CPR HK monitoring and trend evaluation.

PDGS(Payload Data Ground Segment) will be located at ESRIN in Rome, Italy, is in charge of X-Band downlink operations of downlinking stored science data and recorded HKTM.

The X-band ground stations are located in Kiruna (Sweden) and Inuvik (Canada).

X-band downlink operation will secure approximately 10 orbits per day for EarthCARE, and continuous behind orbits are also expected.

In the nominal case where the non-behind passes continues (approximately 60% of the total), data from the most recent orbit (approximately 93 minutes) is downlinked, and L0 data, GPS orbit, and attitude data are provided by ESA onboard. 2.6 hours after the start of observation.

In the worst case, where the invisible path continues and recorded data is accumulated onboard (approximately 837 minutes), it will be 16 hours after the start of observation.

The data received by the X-band station is transmitted from ESA/PDGS to JAXA/MOS at Tsukuba Space Center (TKSC) in Japan.

Data processing and provision will be carried out by both ESA and JAXA, with JAXA performing level 1 processing of CPR and level 2 processing using CPR and other sensors, and providing to JAXA’s users as EarthCARE standard product.

JAXA EarthCARE ground system includes the MOS data processing system (DPS) for data processing, the Earth observation satellite mission external organization interface gateway (E-XING) for exchanging data with external organizations and managing the storage of data, and EarthCARE products. It consists of an earth observation satellite data provision system (G-Portal) that is provided to JAXA’s users, and EarthCARE/CPR utilization research system that develops, calibrates and verifies algorithms for data processing (product creation).

Mission data is sent from PDGS via E-XING, and standard products are processed by DPS.

After processing, the data will be stored in the BEACH Archive Storage System (BASS) and JAXA Supercomputer System (JSS) via E-XING, and the observation data will be provided to the Earth Observation Satellite Data Provision System (G-Portal).

This allows registered users such as researchers to search for and obtain products from G-Portal.

All of these data transmission/reception, processing, storage, provision, etc. are operated automatically. The JAXA Ground Segment is depicted in the following figure2.

The processing flow in EarthCARE/CPR Mission Operetion System is shown in Figure3