Space Agency Modernization

To address CNES’s challenge with lengthy reindexing and downtime in its REGARDS platform, gravity9 adopted an agile, proof-of-concept approach designed to demonstrate rapid, tangible results. Rather than altering the complex existing system, we built a standalone application that mirrored the REGARDS platform’s core search functionality. Using over 21 million real-world records from CNES’s SPOT World Heritage program, we recreated the actual workload to accurately assess performance and scalability under realistic conditions.

Within 13 days, gravity9 delivered a Proof of Concept that replaced PostgreSQL with MongoDB Atlas as the primary data store and introduced MongoDB Atlas Search for real-time indexing. This eliminated the need for time-consuming reindexing, dramatically improving efficiency. The test proved transformative, reindexing 21 million records in only 50 minutes, with no impact on live searches demonstrating how MongoDB Atlas could power a faster, more reliable, and future-ready data platform for CNES.