Arqiva’s Satellite Media Solutions division supplied production facilities for the live ESA TV transmission of the launch of Giove-A, the first European Galileo system satellite to rival the USA’s GPS, for the European Space Agency’s production company World Wide Pictures.
The footage involved handling multiple feeds: inbound from World Wide’s team at the Baikonur Cosmodrome as well as live telemetry data from the Soyuz rocket; and outbound full programme from the ground station at Guildford’s Surrey Satellite Technology and also via videoconference link to Paris. Coverage was extensive – ESA monitoring indicated 100 million viewers on 28 December alone.
“We needed news-scale trucks with OB-style control, including comprehensive camera racking, matrix switchers and vision mixers,” said World Wide Pictures MD and producer Chris Courtenay Taylor. “Arqiva had such vehicles and its flexibility and technical expertise helped us ensure that a complex, multi-path production achieved the client news objectives for the launch of an extremely important European project.”
“The Galileo launch had international significance” says Arqiva’s ad-hoc sales manager Nigel Crow. “It was especially important to demonstrate SSTL’s role and we were delighted to be transmitting live from there with footage that achieved significant coverage not just on BBC, ITV, C4, Sky and CNN – but actually across most of continental Europe.”
