The European Space Agency has inaugurated the Human and Robotic Exploration-Science Data Center (HRE-SDC) located on the Montegancedo Campus at the Madrid Polytechnic University (UPM). The center, whose launch has been in preparation for two years, was presented at the UPM School of Aeronautics and Space Engineering (ETSIAE), the alma mater of some of its researchers.

The new data management center will share its premises and its director with the E-USOC (Spanish User Support & Operation Center). She is Ana Laverón, professor at the UPM, who said at the inaugural event: “The time has come to present the HRE-SDC, which began two years ago and has already produced successful pilot projects with data from research by the E-USOC and the N-USOC (Norwegian User Support & Operation Center)”.

Leading center in Europe
The purpose of the ESA is to use and preserve the data generated during its space missions and in the tests carried out on the various platforms. Thanks to this center, part of the Heritage Space Data Program initiative, this public university in Madrid has become a leading hub for gathering and managing the information from the experiments carried out on European space missions.

Specifically, the data that will be managed in the HRE-SDC are generated in the missions of the ESA's Human and Robotics Exploration (HRE) division from which it takes its name. This task will be done by a team comprising above all aerospace and IT engineers.

The first stage of their work will be to make the data available to the scientists involved in the mission that generated them. After a period of exclusivity, these data will be released for their study by the whole scientific community, so that anyone who uses them can send the result of their work back to HRE-SDC to once again make it available to all scientists who are interested.

Official presentation
Pedro Duque, Minister for Science and Innovation, attended the presentation of the HRE-SDC and highlighted Spain scientific and business activity in the aerospace area. “This data management center at the UPM will benefit the Spanish scientific community and guarantee easy access for researchers to the data from the ESA's missions”, he said.

Guillermo Cisneros, rector of the UPM, highlighted the role of the institution he heads: “We are proud that the European Space Agency has chosen this public university in Madrid to manage the archive and the data drawn from its space missions in benefit of the scientific community, the general public and future generations, as evidence of the mutual trust and the quality of the work done by teachers, researchers and students in the research centers of the UPM”.