Rome 01 April 2019 14:00
- More than 50 Petrobras oil rigs north of Rio de Janeiro will be monitored by COSMO-SkyMed satellites daily, along with another 40 critical locations.
- Leonardo’s subsidiary Telespazio Brasil operates in the country in key areas: satellite communications, monitoring of Amazon, security, Defence.
Leonardo, through its subsidiary Telespazio Brasil, signed a contract with Petrobras for satellite monitoring of the company's oil rigs in the Campos basin, north of Rio de Janeiro. The activity, which continues a multi-year collaboration, aims to detect any oil spills from the exploration and production operations. The announcement was made ahead of LAAD Defense and Security Exhibition, Rio de Janeiro, 2-5 April.
The 14 months contract includes the supply to Petrobras of an average of 150 images per month from the COSMO-SkyMed satellites constellation, the most advanced radar Earth observation system, as well as specialised technical services available 24 hours a day. More than 50 oil platforms operating in the Campos basin will be monitored by COSMO-SkyMed satellites, the only ones capable of providing night and day information in any weather condition with a high frequency of review, ensuring coverage of the entire area and of additional 40 critical locations every 48 hours.
Petrobras is the largest Brazilian company in the energy sector. Active in the production, refining and transport of oil & gas products, Petrobras is one of the world leaders in the technologies for exploration in deep and ultra-deep waters.
In Brazil, Leonardo has been present for more than twenty years in the space sector through its subsidiary Telespazio Brasil. Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro and with offices in São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Cuiabá, Telespazio Brasil is one of the leading Brazilian providers of satellite services and solutions in the communications, multimedia, and Earth observation sectors, as well as engineering, operations and maintenance services for satellite ground systems.
The contract announced today represents a new success in the business area of services and applications based on data from the COSMO-SkyMed satellites, already used in Brazil for monitoring deforestation in the Amazon, for safety, to support agriculture and for Defense applications.
About COSMO-SkyMed
COSMO-SkyMed, financed by the Italian Space Agency, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Education, University and Research, is the first dual-use Earth observation system. Its four satellites monitor the entire Earth from space, day and night, under any weather conditions, using high-resolution X-band radars. The system is the result of the competences of the Italian space industry, with Leonardo and its joint ventures Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio leading an industrial team of small and medium sized enterprises. In particular, Thales Alenia Space (Thales 67%, Leonardo 33%) is the prime contractor, responsible for the entire system, while Telespazio (Leonardo 67%, Thales 33%) developed the ground segment and hosts the Constellation Control Center at the Fucino Space Center. The data generated by the COSMOSkyMed satellites are marketed worldwide by e-GEOS (Telespazio 80%, ASI 20%). The COSMO-SkyMed programme will move forward in the near future with the launch of the second generation satellites, which will set a new performance standard for space-based radar observation systems in terms of precision, image quality and the flexibility of user services.