ESA’s Living Planet Programme: Overview & Status

ESA’s Living Planet Programme: Overview &

Status

Mark R. DrinkwaterEuropean Space Agency

Earth Observation Programmes

M. Drinkwater - May 2008- GODAE IGST XIII

2ESA’s E.O. Toolkit

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The Science and Research Component of the Living Planet Programme

Focus on:

Atmosphere

Cryosphere

Biosphere

Geosphere

Hydrosphere

To: Improve the understanding of the interactions between components of the Earth System

Understand the impact of human activities on natural Earth processes

Earth Explorers - I

Key Scientific Challenges identified in “The Changing Earth”, ESA SP-1304

Living Planet Programme (LPP)


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OceansCryosphere

Land SurfaceClimatology

+ Global Ozone+ Land Surface

+ Ocean Colour+ Atmospheric Constituents

ERS 1ERS 1 ERS 2ERS 2 ENVISATENVISAT

1991 1995 2002

Europe’s expanding EO capability

Earth WatchGMESEarth WatchGMES

Earth ExplorersEarth Explorers

History of ESA Earth Observation

Still alive!


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Operational Service drivenResearch driven

Earth Explorer Earth Watch

Core Missions

Opportunity Missions EUMETSAT GMES

MeteosatMSGEPS (MetOp)MTGPost EPS

Sentinel 1GOCE2008

EarthCARE2013

ADM-Aeolus2009

CryoSat 22009

SMOS2008

Swarm2010

Sentinel 2Sentinel 3Sentinel 4Sentinel 5

www.esa.int/livingplanet

+ 6 Candidate Core ExplorersEarth Explorer 72016?

ESA’s Living Planet Programme

http://www.esa.int/export/esaLP/ESAYEK1VMOC_goce_1.html

http://www.esa.int/export/esaLP/ASESMYNW9SC_earthcare_1.html


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2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Core

Opportunity

GOCE ADM-Aeolus EarthCARE

Cryosat 2Swarm

Gravity Field and Steady State Ocean Circulation Explorer

Atmospheric Dynamics Mission

Cloud, Aerosols & Radiation Explorer

Sea Ice thickness and Ice sheet topography

Geomagnetic field survey

ESA Earth Explorers 1 - 6

SMOS

Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity


9GOCE: ESA’s Gravity Mission

Its objectives are to improve understanding of:– global ocean circulation and transfer of heat– physics of the Earth’s interior (lithosphere & mantle) – sea level records, topographic processes, evolution of ice sheets and

sea level change

The GGravity field and steady-stateOOcean CCirculation EExplorer (GOCE)

www.esa.int/livingplanet/goce


10CryoSat: ESA’s Ice Mission

Its objectives are to improve our understanding of:

- thickness and mass fluctuations of polar land and marine ice - to quantify rates of thinning/thickening due to climate variations

www.esa.int/livingplanet/cryosat


11SMOS: Water Mission

Its objectives are:- to provide global maps of soil moisture and ocean salinity for hydrological studies- to advance our understanding of the freshwater cycle - to improve climate, weather and extreme-event forecasting

www.esa.int/livingplanet/smos


12ADM-Aeolus: Wind Mission

Its objectives are: - to provide global observations of wind profiles from space - to improve the quality of weather forecasting- to enhance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and climate processes www.esa.int/livingplanet/adm-aeolus


13Swarm: Magnetic Mission

Courtesy GeoForschungsZentrum

Potsdam GFZ

The objectives of the Swarm constellation are:- to provide the best-ever survey of the Earth’s geomagnetic field and its

variation in time- to use these data to gain new insight into the Earth’s interior and climate.

www.esa.int/livingplanet/swarm

Courtesy EADS, Astrium


14EarthCARE: Cloud & Aerosol Mission

EarthCARE is a joint European - Japanese mission

Its objectives are:- to improve process understanding of cloud-aerosol-radiation interactions- to measure parameters to be included in models- to improve climate and weather model predictions

www.esa.int/livingplanet/earthcare


15The Six Candidate EE7 Missions

• BIOMASSA BIOMASS Monitoring Mission for Carbon Assessment

• FLEXFLuorescence Explorer

• Core-H2OCold Regions Hydrology High-resolution Observatory

• A-SCOPEAdvanced Space Carbon and Climate Observation of Planet Earth

• PREMIERPRocess Exploration through Measurements of Infrared and millimetre-wave

Emitted Radiation

• TRAQTRopospheric composition and Air Quality

Mission Advisory Groups formed and several rounds of meetings taken place since Nov. 2006 (Mission Requirement Document preparation => derivation of technical requirements).

Two parallel Industrial Mission Assessment studies underway – to assess each concept


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EarthWatch: Global Monitoring for Environment

and Security ESA GMES Space Segment

• Sentinel 1 – SAR imaging– Continuity of established SAR applications

• Sentinel 2 – Superspectral imaging– Continuity of Landsat/SPOT class land measurements

• Sentinel 3 – Ocean and Global Land monitoring– Wide-swath multi-spectral sensors, SAR altimeter

• Sentinels 4/5 – Geostationary & LEO atmosphericGeostationary & LEO atmospheric– atmospheric composition monitoring, trans-boundary pollution

Close cooperation/coordination with European Commission and Eumetsat


19Conclusions

• The Living Planet Programme features exciting new missions focusing on specific scientific or operational goals

• Six science-driven Earth Explorers are approved and under development (7th EE under consideration)

• 3 operational GMES Sentinel missions (1A, 2A, 3A) approved and under development– Sentinel-4/-5 presently under consideration

• ESA to launch a succession of EO satellite missions over the next decade – with which to address key elements of the Earth system


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A constant objective: ease access to Earth Observation data

Common objective for all missions data handled by ESA:Envisat, ERS, Earth Explorers, and Third Party Missions (e.g. ALOS, SPOT-4, PROBA, …)

Simplified online application for scientific data use

Internet access to all Near Real Time (NRT) data

Internet access to archived data gradually implemented

Development of alternative ways to provide data (e.g. processing on demand, toolboxes)

Access to EO Data

via http://earth.esa.intvia http://earth.esa.int

ESA’s Living Planet Programme: Overview & Status

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