Company and Use Case

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organization comprising 22 member states, dedicated to space exploration. One of its key initiatives is the Science Data Center (ESDC), which archives data from ESA missions into a comprehensive Digital Library of the Universe. This library serves as a repository for mission histories and hosts data for public and scientific use, offering privileged access to scientific teams globally.

Performance Problems to Solve

ESA previously utilized legacy database systems like Oracle, Sybase, DB3, and SQL Server. However, the Science Data Center team needed an open-source database to benefit from community knowledge, cross-reference datasets via SQL, and leverage a diverse ecosystem of tools and connectors. They initially chose PostgreSQL for its capability to handle relational and unstructured data, but faced challenges with geospatial and time-series data management.

Performance Gains Unlocked

By adopting Timescale, ESA significantly improved performance and usability over vanilla PostgreSQL. Timescale automatically partitions time-series data and abstracts the complexity behind hypertables, eliminating the need for manual implementation of table inheritance or declarative partitioning. This solution enabled ESA to efficiently store billions of rows in a single virtual table, enhancing their ability to manage and utilize vast amounts of mission data seamlessly.