Case Study: European Space Agency achieves scalable, mission-critical data storage for Gaia's 1-billion-star map with NetApp

European Space Agency - Customer Case Study

The European Space Agency (ESA) faced a massive data challenge: the Gaia mission alone produces tens of billions of observations daily and will catalog 1 billion stars into a dataset exceeding 2 PB, while ESA’s many missions require mission‑critical reliability, daily delivery to research institutes, and indefinite archival access for future science. Ensuring constant availability and scalable capacity to support current and unknown future needs was essential to continue exploring and sharing discoveries.

ESA deployed NetApp FAS storage with the ONTAP operating system to provide high availability, scalable capacity, and long‑term data management. The solution enabled ESA to meet daily delivery commitments, archive and serve the Gaia catalog for public and scientific access, and scale confidently for upcoming missions—giving the agency the reliability and flexibility it needed to keep its “Library of the Universe” online.

European Space Agency

Ruben Alvarez

IT Manager