Conference Agenda

The primary objective of the European Space Agency’s 7th Earth Explorer mission, Biomass, is to determine the worldwide distribution of forest above-ground biomass (AGB) in order to reduce the major uncertainties in calculations of carbon stocks and fluxes associated with the terrestrial biosphere, including carbon fluxes associated with Land Use Change, forest degradation and forest regrowth. It also has important secondary objectives, viz. sub-surface mapping in arid zones, icesheet motion, production of a “bare earth” Digital Terrain Model, and mapping of ionospheric structure along its dawn-dusk orbit.

The satellite is currently in its final integration and testing phase thus nearing completion of its development. The mission will consist of three phases: (1) the initial up to 6-month Commissioning Phase; (2) a Tomographic Phase (TomoSAR) of ~17 months, which will give a single global tomographic coverage; and (3) the Interferometric Phase (PolInSAR), which occupies the rest of the 5-year lifetime of the mission, and will produce 4-5 global coverages with dual-baseline polarimetric interferometry, each requiring ~9 months.

The presentation will provide an overview of the current status of the Biomass mission and will detail a number of specific features of the mission and its operations.

A fundamental element of Copernicus, the EU’s Earth Observation and monitoring programme, is the development and operation of an independent dedicated and sustained space-based observation infrastructure. The six “Sentinel” first generation missions including the Sentinel-1 SAR mission ensure continuity until 2030 time frame.

The Sentinel-1 mission acquires systematically and provides routinely a large volume of C-band SAR data to the Copernicus Marine, Land, Emergency, Climate Change, and Security services, as well as to national services and to the global scientific and commercial user community.

In the framework of the evolution of the a user-driven Copernicus program, ESA is planning the extension of the current Sentinel-1 mission, referred to as Sentinel-1 Next Generation (S-1 NG). It’s main goal is to ensure the C-band data continuity beyond the next decade (2030) in support of operational Copernicus services that are routinely using Sentinel-1 data. In addition, the enhanced capabilities of Sentinel-1NG along with novel imaging capabilities will enable the further improvement of operational Copernicus services and the implementation of evolving applications.

The Copernicus Expansion Programme includes the new missions that have been identified by the European Commission as priorities. One of these missions is the Radar Observing System for Europe at L-band (ROSE-L). ROSE-L will support key European policy objectives through the filling of observation gaps in the current Copernicus satellite constellation and will provide enhanced continuity for operational services. It will thus respond to land monitoring and emergency management services with target applications focusing on soil moisture, crops, forests, surface deformation, monitoring of polar ice sheets and seasonal snow. The mission will have the capability to work in synergy with other Sentinel-1 operating at C-band and will support the overall continuity of the Copernicus observations, e.g., improving their accuracy, the product quality, the temporal and spatial resolution of the collected data.

This presentation will provide an overview of the current status of the Sentinel-1NG and ROSE-L missions, their mission objectives and will give an insight into the mission information products supporting enhanced continuity.

In essence, Harmony addresses key science questions in several domains. Its observation concept enables unique measurements over timescales ranging from tens of milliseconds (to measure ocean currents) to years (to measure solid Earth surface motion).

The Harmony mission comprises two identical satellites orbiting in convoy with a Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite. Both Harmony satellites carry two instruments: a receive-only Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), working together with Sentinel-1’s radar instrument as the illumination source, and a multiview Thermal Infra-Red (TIR) instrument. The SAR instrument will exploit the multi-angle viewing geometry uniquely offered by the combination of a Sentinel-1 radar satellite, with two additional bistatic receivers.

During the mission, the Harmony convoy will switch between two formation configurations, in order to address the different science goals. The mission will start with a one year so-called XTI phase. During this time the two Harmony spacecrafts will fly in a close-formation configuration optimised for single-pass across-track interferometric observations, from which surface height time-series, and, therefore, changes, can be derived. After flying for one year in the XTI configuration, the mission will be reconfigured to fly for three years in the Stereo formation. During the Stereo phase there will be one Harmony satellite flying ahead of Sentinel-1, and one satellite trailing Sentinel-1. The distances of both Harmony spacecrafts to Sentinel-1 will be around 350 km, in order to maximise the angular

diversity between their observations. Finally the mission will be reconfigured again for another year of XTI phase, so that slow topography changes can be observed with respect to the observations taken in the first year. The space segment will thus be designed for a lifetime of 5 years.

The presentation will provide an overview of Harmony’s science objectives and the current status of its development.

Please see attached PDF file.

TBC