The Helix Nebula project brings together leading IT providers with three of Europe's largest research centres: CERN, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

The project aims to develop a cloud-computing infrastructure, initially based on the needs of European IT-intense scientific research organizations, but taking into account the needs of governments, businesses and citizens.

Eventually the project aims to provide sustainable cloud services for research communities - a "Science Cloud."

Last month, the European Space Agency (ESA) in Frascati, Italy, played host to an event titled "Big data from space". Wolfgang Lengert, manager of two separate Earth-observation satellite missions at ESA, spoke to International Science Grid This Week about the Helix Nebula and the challenges of Big data.

Read the interview: "View from above: A planet brimming with data" - International Science Grid This Week