The European Space Agency (ESA) runs several scientific exploration and research deep space missions e.g. Rosetta, Mars-Express, Venus-Express or space observatories like Herschel or Planck. To ensure a reliable communication with such deep space probes, ESA has built up a ground station antenna network all over the globe.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is positioning several data-relay satellites in the geostationary orbit to relay information between non-geostationary satellites, spacecraft, airborne platforms and fixed ground-stations. The EDRS reduces time delays in the transmission of data intensive and time critical applications and ensures on-demand data availabilty at the right time at the right place.
The Alphasat I-XL, launched in 2013, included beyond its main task several ESA TDPs (Technology Demonstration Payloads). TDP5 includes a Q-/V Band communications experiment to assess the feasibility of these bands for future commercial applications.