National Observatory of Athens

NOA, apart from being the oldest Greek Research Institution with a constant presence and activity in Science at international level as well as in the Greek society for 170 years (since 1842), is a Research Centre active in Space Sciences and their applications with remarkable achievements. NOA with its three Institutes (Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications & Remote Sensing IAASARS; Environmental Research and Sustainable Development IERSD; Geodynamics GI), its highly-skilled human resources and the important infrastructure obtained over the last two decades, plays an important role in international space science activities and has a leading role in the national efforts for presence in the European Space Sector.
NOA also constitutes a critical national link with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other relevant organizations and bodies within the European Union. IAASARS/NOA is one of the three NOA Institutes (formerly two institutes merged earlier in 2012) currently has a permanent staff of 30, plus 40 contracted scientists (mostly post-docs).

IAASARS/NOA has been actively involved in Space Sciences, Space applications and Earth Observation with remarkable achievements in leading research, and operational activities in the context of EU flagship programs/initiatives namely COPERNICUS, GALILEO, GEO, and GEOSS. The Institute has an important human capacity with high skills in the relevant sciences. It owns significant space-based monitoring infrastructures and acquisition facilities (e.g. X-/L-band stations, MSG-SEVIRI, ESA’s CGS – Mirror Site acquisition facilities), and in-situ networks for the monitoring of the Earth’s environment, attributing to its leading role in Space and Earth Observation domains at national and international level. Taking advantage of the existing EO receiving infrastructures, and the secured access to space agencies as ESA, NASA, DLR, CSA, JAXA, as well as the use of ground-based infrastructure and advanced models, the Institute provides near real-time observations and services to operational program frameworks of EC, ESA and to authorities and entities at National and European level (e.g. Ministries, Civil Protection Authorities, municipalities, Regional Services, Environmental Organizations).
In addition, the Institute has strong outreach activities through the NOA’s Visitor Centre, and existing communications channels (e.g. Newsletters, presence in social media etc).

On October 25th, 2016 the new version of HNSDMS (which comprises the 2nd generation of the system) was released and officially announced on November 18th, 2016 providing the full functionalities of Copernicus Collaborative Nodes to its users.
Nowadays HNSDMS is fully compatible with the Copernicus Collaborative Nodes since it is based on the the DHuS software[1] developed by a Serco and GAEL Systems consortium under a contract with the European Space Agency – Funded by the EU and ESA.
It is running on a high performance VM owned by GRNET/GEANT with the following characteristics:
● 10 Gbit/s NIC to connect with the Copernicus Collaborative Nodes
● Debian Jessie 8.5, 64bit OS
● 16 CPU cores
● 16 GB RAM
● 44 TB disk
● Static, dedicated IPV4 & IPV6 addresses

For the synchronization of the Sentinel products, HNSDMS uses the OData Synchronizers tool provided by the DHuS software which utilizes the HTTPS protocol and the Restful APIs built upon it (in particular the OData protocol[2]), in order to allow the replication of the products (i.e. copy of both data and metadata in the VM’s disk) from the Copernicus Collaborative Nodes (Node 1[3] & Node 2[4]) that are dedicated to this purpose.
[1] http://sentineldatahub.github.io/DataHubSystem/
[2] http://www.odata.org/
[3] Copernicus Collaborative Node 1 (Sentinel-1) with Web address: https://colhub.copernicus.eu/dhus/#/home provides discovery and access to Sentinel-1_NRT and Sentinel-1_NTC products.
[4] Copernicus Collaborative Node 2 with Web address https://colhub.esa.int/dhus/#/home provides discovery and access to Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1_NRT products.