TERMA SPACE SECURES MAJOR CONTRACT WITH EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY

Copenhagen, 31 January 2020– During the past 20 years Terma has had business relationships with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), headquartered in Garching near Munich in Germany. ESO operates a number of telescopes located high in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

At the start of this year, Terma secured a three-years contract for IT support for the headquarters in Garching and two sites in Chile - Santiago and Paranal. A support team of about 20 is needed in Garching, with a further 16 in Chile. The teams will be in place by the middle of 2020.

The three-year contract takes effect from 1 October 2020 with a phase-in period starting 1 July 2020. There are options for an additional two years included.

Currently, Terma also has a team in Garching managing the astronomical archive.

The Paranal Observatory

The telescope location in Chile is chosen due to the very high number of cloudless nights per year and the clear skies due to low levels of dust and pollution in the atmosphere. It is home to the Very Large Telescope – VLT – actually four telescopes, and, still under construction, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

The telescopes in Paranal are located at 2,600 meters altitude, a few tens of kilometers from the Pacific coastline. In these optimal conditions they are able to obtain images of almost as high quality as space-based telescopes. They have an excellent track record for important scientific research about the nature of our universe. In many cases these are fundamental ground-breaking discoveries putting it in a world leading position. A by-product of this is some outstandingly beautiful images of our cosmos. See www.eso.org for examples.

European Southern Observatory headquarters in Garching, Germany – photo: ESO