Astrium is designing a new climate satellite, CarbonSat, for the European Space Agency (ESA), with work set to be performed over the next 22 months.
A team of international engineers under Astrium’s lead will work on the project based on the experience drawn from Envisat satellite’s Sciamachy spectrometer, combining all the components that frame the satellite.
CarbonSat, which is competing to be the eighth Earth Explorer mission of ESA’s Earth observation programme, is expected to continue the tracking of greenhouse gases from space following Sciamachy.
The new climate satellite will offer scientists with essential information for climate analysis and for refining climate simulation computer models through its measurement of global concentration and distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).
According to Astrium, to predict Earth’s climate the main requirement is comprehensive knowledge of sources and global distribution CO2 and CH4, which are the two main greenhouse gases responsible for global climate change.
CarbonSat will provide measurement data with an enhanced spatial resolution of about 2x2km, and is expected to facilitate scientists to measure localised sources of CO2, including coal-fired power plants and emissions from cities and geological sources such as volcanoes.
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By GlobalDataSimilar results can also be achieved for methane by measuring releases from sources, including landfill sites and large oil processing complexes, and providing information on the researched issue of methane emissions from the oceans throughout the world.
The company said that the new satellite will also offer first exhaustive surveys of global small-scale sources of emissions, further facilitating to differentiate between natural emissions and those occurring due to human activity.
Further, CarbonSat climate satellite is expected to support the international climate agreements signed in Kyoto and Copenhagen.
Astrium is prime-contractor for four of the six ESA Earth Explorer missions, which include Cryosat-2, Swarm, Aeolus and EarthCARE and other two missions, GOCE and SMOS.
The space agency is also studying the MicroCarb mission for French space agency, aimed at assessing CO2 fluxes between carbon sources and sinks and enhance their knowledge of carbon sinks.
Image: CarbonSat will measure global concentration and distribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) and provide information for climate analysis. Photo: Astrium / 2012.
