Thales Alenia Space to develop the payload for the third satellite of the Copernicus CO2M mission

Thales Alenia Space has signed an amendment to its CO2M contract, worth 88 million euros (US$92 million), with the space segment prime contractor OHB System. This amendment provides for the development of the payload for the third satellite in the CO2M Copernicus mission, in addition to the payloads of the first two satellites that are currently under integration.

Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union's Space Programme. It provides accurate, timely, and easily accessible information to improve environmental management and understand and mitigate the effects of climate change. The CO2M mission, as part of the Copernicus Programme, is developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) with co-funding from the European Union and the European Space Agency.

Following the awarding of the CO2M contract in 2020 for the development of the first two satellites of this mission, ESA signed with OHB System and Thales Alenia Space to provide a third satellite and payload. With this additional satellite, the CO2M constellation will consolidate its operations while enhancing the accuracy of CO2 measurements thanks to greater repeatability of acquisitions (more than 3 times a week at European latitudes).

The goal of the CO2M mission is to measure human-induced atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane. These measurements will reduce current uncertainties in estimates of carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels at subcontinental scales. This will provide the European Union with an independent source of information to assess the effectiveness of public policies and track their impact on decarbonizing Europe and meeting national emissions reduction targets.

Each CO2M satellite's payload includes three instruments:
- a combined CO2/NO2 (carbon dioxide/nitrogen dioxide) instrument based on a near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectrometer provided by Thales Alenia Space in France
- a Multi-Angle Polarimeter (MAP) based on four identical cameras, contained in a dedicated optical unit, provided by Thales Alenia Space in France
- a Cloud Imager (CLIM) derived from the flight-proven Proba-V instrument provided by OIP Sensor Systems in Belgium.

CO2M will measure images of atmospheric columns of CO2 with the resolution, accuracy, time sampling, and spatial coverage required to provide space component inputs of the Operational Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions Monitoring & Verification Support (MVS) Capacity.

As prime contractor, OHB System leads an industrial consortium, including Thales Alenia Space and OIP Sensors, to build the CO2M instruments. Thales Alenia Space in France is responsible for developing the CO2/NO2 Instruments and Multi-angular Polarimeters for the CO2M satellites. Thales Alenia Space in Spain will provide the S-band transponder (SBT) and the Instrument Control Unit (ICU), Thales SESO will provide key optical elements of the CO2/NO2 spectrometers (collimator mirrors and imagers optics), and Thales Alenia Space in Switzerland the telescope of the CO2/NO2 instrument.

(article source: Thales / editor: Anton van Rijsbergen)
(image source: © OHB, via Thales)