Datel helps select data archiving software for European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter

The Estonian IT company Datel has conducted a study into technological options for creating a research archive of heliophysical data collected during the Solar Orbiter mission of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Engineers from Estonia assessed 10 database technologies designed for recording time series, four of them in more detail. According to Evelin Kasenõmm, the Head of Space Domain at Datel, all of the shortlisted technologies were open-source or open-source licensed.

The technical solutions proposed to provide for a cost-effective way of making solar data accessible to researchers, enabling them to perform searches through billions of data points as well as to visualize data. Kasenõmm says that Datel’s engineers found testing with realistic data volumes to be the biggest challenge. The testing process was incredibly resource-intensive because it required more than half a trillion items to be loaded into every one of the four designated databases for the purpose of comparison. The project lasted for nearly a year and TimescaleDB was found to be the most suitable database technology among the four options.

The contribution of Estonian engineers paves the way for potential new discoveries in the international scientific community based on the massive datasets collected during the Solar Orbiter global space project with the support of the selected top-of-the-line technology. Chairman of the Management Board of Datel Urmas Kõlli says that it is essential to give greater meaning to the everyday operations of the company. “We’re delighted to be part of one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – the process of comprehensive space exploration,” he said. “The fact that the ESA entrusted Estonian engineers with this order is a mark of recognition and shows that our IT skills are held in high regard. The global importance of the project being undertaken with the ESA can’t be understated. We’ve completed various projects with the agency over the years and space will definitely remain an important area for us in the near future.”

Datel has been investing in space and knowledge-intensive geospatial data technology for decades. It has partnered with the ESA on a number of projects since 2017.

Solar Orbiter is a spacecraft that was sent into orbit around the Sun as part of one of the largest global space projects in recent years headed up by the ESA. This was achieved with gravitational assistance from Venus and Earth, sending Solar Orbiter into the Sun’s orbit at a higher angle to allow us a view of the poles of our star. The mission was keenly anticipated among the scientific community as it enabled a closer look at the peculiar behavior of the Sun. NASA also played an active role in the ESA’s mission: Solar Orbiter launched Cape Canaveral in Florida.

For more information on the Solar Orbiter project, go to the ESA’s website at