Developed by SPACEBEL on behalf of CNES, the PICARD scientific mission centre is located and operated at the Belgian User Support and Operation Centre (B-USOC) next to the Belgian Observatory in Uccle.

The first main task of the mission centre concerns the programming of the payload, i.e. the instruments on-board of the satellite. Since the launching of the PICARD microsatellite in June 2010 and as the second main task, it also centralizes all image acquisition requests, acquires, treats and archives the data collected from the on-board instruments and forwards them to the scientific world.

SPACEBEL has now signed an agreement directly with B-USOC to ensure the maintenance and the evolution of the PICARD scientific mission centre for the next two years.