Team Blitz India
New Delhi: Two space companies have been awarded major contracts to work on a UK-led climate satellite mission, during the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, UAE.
Airbus UK has been awarded nearly £95 million and Teledyne e2v £9 million, through the UK Space Agency’s membership of the European Space Agency (ESA), to deliver the next phase of the TRUTHS mission.
TRUTHS (Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial- and Helio- Studies) will collect the most accurate measurements of energy coming into the earth from the sun, and light reflected off earth’s surface, said UK Space Agency.
This will significantly improve understanding of changes in the earth’s climate and inform global action to mitigate them, according to a release. It will highlight how TRUTHS is part of a future global system of collaboration that will complement NASA’s CLARREO pathfinder mission, which is designed to detect infrared emissions from earth, the UK Space Agency statement said.
The funding to Airbus will go towards satellite design and development, while Teledyne e2v will work on a sensor, called the Hyperspectral Imaging Spectrometer Detection System, and associated electronics.
This instrument will make measurements of ocean and land surfaces to support studies of Earth radiation budgets and improve observations that support the modelling of climate, land use change, the carbon cycle, agriculture and pollution.
Due to launch in 2030, the ground-breaking mission will create a ‘climate and calibration observatory in space’ which will reduce uncertainty in earth observation data and set a new benchmark to detect changes in earth’s climate system. This will build confidence in climate action by linking observations from space unequivocally to international measurement standards.
Conceived by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory and initiated by the UK Space Agency, TRUTHS is being developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The satellite will be built by the UK space industry, led by Airbus UK, along with partners across Europe, including Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Romania and Czech Republic, which have also provided funding for the mission. The announcement of the new contracts was made during the UK Space Agency’s involvement in COP28 in Dubai.
