Case Study: European Space Agency achieves reliable, secure high-speed distribution of Gaia mission data with Aspera

The European Space Agency Selects Aspera to Distribute Astronomical Data Captured by the Gaia Mission

The European Space Agency (ESA) faced the challenge of securely and reliably distributing massive volumes of astronomical data from its Gaia mission to geographically dispersed Data Processing Centers across Europe. Daily transfers range from about 100 GB and can spike up to 4 TB, contributing to a mission total approaching a petabyte, so ESA needed a solution that handled large files, integrated with existing workflows, and ensured security and data integrity.

ESA deployed Aspera Enterprise Server at the Science Operations Centre in Madrid, with Aspera Point-to-Point clients at the DPCs and Aspera Console for monitoring and control. The result is fast, predictable and secure transfers—100 GB to 4 TB per day—eliminating costly hard-drive shipments, reducing processing turnaround, and providing encryption, restart-on-failure, bandwidth control and real-time transfer visibility.

European Space Agency