Parameter Space, a spin-out from University College Dublin (UCD), has secured a €800,000 ($879,520) contract from the European Space Agency (ESA).
The cash will be used to fuel a three-year project into developing software capable of utilising the vast volume of data sent back to Earth from the ESA’s Gaia satellite, part of a €700m mission to measure positions of around a billion stars, discover new planets, and identify new stars and supernovae.
In the past nine months, the satellite has made roughly 100 billion measurements using its one billion pixel camera, and its database will grow to one petabyte in size – the equivalent of 200,000 DVDs worth of data. It is hoped that the data will lead to the creation of a 3D map of the galaxy.
Established last year, the Parameter Space team will add four new jobs at the firm with the cash, and will develop analysis algorithms with help from the scientific community for a detailed breakdown of Gaia’s data.
William O’Mullane, head of operations at ESA’s Development Division, said: “Having personally worked on the Gaia Science Ground Segment for nearly two decades it is great to start thinking about delivering data to the world. The European Space Astronomy Centre already serves up the ESA space science mission data and will also serve up Gaia data. This contract is part of our continuing attempt to improve our delivery of science, it is a pleasure to find an innovative and capable team to collaborate on this in Dublin.”
