European Data Relay System

The European Data Relay System, EDRS, is a European constellation of geostationary satellites that relays data between satellites, aircraft, uncrewed vehicles and ground stations, so that low Earth orbit satellites can send large volumes of data almost continuously instead of waiting to pass over a ground station. Its laser communication terminals carry 1.8 gigabits per second across the 45,000 kilometre link from low to geostationary orbit. EDRS-A is a payload hosted on the Eutelsat 9B satellite, launched in January 2016, and EDRS-C is a dedicated satellite launched on 6 August 2019 that also carries the HYLAS 3 payload. The first users were the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites. It is run as a public private partnership between the European Space Agency and Airbus Defence and Space, which carries overall responsibility for the space and ground segments and takes ownership of the system to provide the data transmission service.