Public procurement notice: Buyer Profile
Published: 2020-07-21
Buyer: European Space Agency (ESA-ESOC)
Country: DE
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 73000000

Technical requirements: Copernicus is the European Union's Earth Observation programme, looking at our planet and its environment for the ultimate benefit of all European citizens. The programme is coordinated and managed by the European Commission, and it is implemented in partnership with the EU Member States and the European Space Agency (ESA), among others.
ESA's Copernicus Flight Operations Segment (FOS) was setup in the past years to deliver flight operations services to the Copernicus Program, for the missions entrusted to the Agency. The FOS is fully integrated within the Copernicus Ground Segment (GS), and its functions are implemented by an efficient combination of a set of common elements already available at the Control Centre (such as Control facilities, Operational and IT Infrastructure, Communication network, etc.) with the procurement of other elements, provided through a set of Copernicus-specific Industrial contracts.
This procurement covers the provision of engineering services in support of the FOS operations of the Copernicus missions (the Sentinels) and associated services entrusted to ESOC for the time period (2022 – 2027), following the mandate, rights, obligations and requirements defined in the corresponding ESA-EU Copernicus Agreement(s). The contract will be placed for an initial duration of 5 years, while the initial contract budget allocation covers only the period until end 2021 (phase-in). It is noted that, pending confirmation of the conditions applicable to the next MFF, the evaluated yearly cost could provide the possibility to continue the service beyond 2021.
In particular, this procurement shall include a phase-in, implemented in parallel to the currently existing services, in view of ensuring the adequate transition between the current services and the new ones to be provided; afterwards, this procurement shall ensure continuity of the operational services' for the Sentinels that are in their operational phase at the moment of contract kick-off, together with the operations preparation, LEOP and Commissioning operations of the upcoming Sentinels' satellite models. The required services cover the technical areas of satellite operations, ground stations, data systems, flight dynamics, and collision probability assessment (integration with EU SST).
The services procured within this contract will be awarded to a single Prime or a Consortium. In the latter, the proposed consortium shall ensure a fair and efficient split of the work inside the companies of the consortium. The European Space Agency (ESA) will make the ITT (cover letter, statement of work, special conditions of tender, draft contract) available on its tendering website (EMITS http://emits.sso.esa.int/emits/owa/emits.main) and on its dedicated Copernicus server (https://copernicus-emits.esa.int/).
In order to access the ITT package from EMITS, a tenderer must be registered asa potential ESA Tenderer.
Any potential tenderers wishing to register with ESA as a potential tenderer is requested to complete the online questionnaire on the ‘esa-star registration’ website:
https://esastar-emr.sso.esa.int. While the registration process is underway, tenderers may access the ITT package through ESA’s dedicated Copernicus server, which is accessible at: https://copernicus-emits.esa.int/
Tenderers are informed, however, that before submitting a proposal they must at least have completed the ‘light registration’ as described in the following ‘esa-star’ registration manual: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/business_with_esa/CG-EM-ORR-S-16_End_User_Manual_v1.2.pdf
Further information on the registration process can be found on the Industry Portal pages available at: