ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission is conceived to perform a close-up study of the Sun and the inner heliosphere. With a perihelion close at 0.29 AU and a maximum aphelion at about 0.85 AU, Solar Orbiter ventures closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before. Furthermore, about 3 years after launch, the spacecraft will begin an out-of-ecliptic phase, with inclinations gradually increasing up to 30 degrees. Solar Orbiter will be launched in 2017 and its nominal mission will last until 2024 (with the possibility of an extended mission until 2026).  It will provide unique data and imagery of the Sun.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) suite onboard Solar Orbiter is composed of two High Resolution Imagers (HRI, one at Lyman-alpha and one at 174 Angstrom), and one dual band Full-Sun imager (FSI) working alternatively at the 174 and 304 Angstrom EUV passbands.
The ground segment for Solar Orbiter flight operations consists of the Solar Orbiter Mission Operations Centre (SMOC) at Darmstadt, the Solar Orbiter Science Ground Segment (SSGS) at ESAC (which includes the Solar Orbiter Science Operations Centre SSOC), and its operational interfaces, including the instrument PI home facilities.

The EUI Data Centre (EDC), under PI supervision and located at the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB; Brussels), will be the single point of contact for instrument planning activities and for data deliveries to the Solar Orbiter archive at ESAC, and is currently in its design phase. The EDC is not an ‘operational’ center, i.e. no commands will be sent directly to the instrument from the EDC, but it will provide the necessary resources and expertise available in the EUI consortium to support instrument specific needs for the operations conducted at the SSOC and SMOC.

The EUI Data Centre will be responsible for delivery to the SSOC and the maintenance of the pipeline software that will process EUI data from telemetry packets to higher level data products. It will also ensure the delivery of these data products to the Solar Orbiter Data Archive, and maintain the instrument user manual that documents the processing of EUI non-science TM packets at the SMOC. The EDC will monitor any anomaly affecting the EUI instrument and produce on a regular basis the Instrument Operations Reports including an instrument health and science performance review.

Here, we present an overview of the EDC and how it envisages to tackle some specific challenges.