Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, and Laurence Monnoyer-Smith, Director of Sustainable Development of the French space agency, CNES, signed an implementation arrangement for the MicroCarb mission at COP26, the UN climate change conference underway in Glasgow.
The UK will provide a further £3.9 million for the mission, which is due to launch in early 2023, said the UKSA.
It is described as the first European satellite dedicated to measuring atmospheric CO2 from all around the world, and is intended to to measure how much carbon is being emitted by natural processes and how much by human activities.
The funding is to complete the build and testing of the satellite, which is led by Thales Alenia Space at the RAL Space assembly and test facilities on the Harwell Space Cluster, in Oxfordshire (STFC RAL Space have designed and built the Pointing and Calibration System for MicroCarb).
Also, National Centre for Earth Observation experts at the universities of Leicester and Edinburgh aim to translate atmospheric CO2 observation into maps that show carbon sources and sinks.
The National Physical Laboratory, in Teddington, will also be involved, to understand how instrument and observation aspects contribute to the data use.
GMV NSL is responsible for designing and implementing the algorithms and operational processors for a number of the carbon dioxide data products involved. According to UKSA, the operational processors convert the raw science data generated by the sensing instrument on the satellite into values that can then be used to form climate datasets.
“The UK is leading the way in using satellites in space to monitor, understand and tackle climate change,” said UK Science Minister George Freeman. “Our National Space Strategy sets out our ambition to tackle global challenges through international collaboration, consolidating our status as a science and technology superpower.”
“MicroCarb puts our space sector at the heart of a major European space mission which will benefit global efforts to achieve Net Zero and build a more sustainable future.”
According to the UKSA, an important feature of the satellite will be its city-scanning observing mode that will allow us to map the CO2 distribution across cities to constrain emissions from cities which are responsible for the majority of global emissions.
Pictured above is Dr Paul Bate and Laurence Monnoyer-Smith after signing the implementation arrangement.
See also: UK space sector generating jobs and growth – UKSA