The following missions have been / are being considered as part of the Atmospheric Mission domain of EDAP and EDAP+, respectively. Further missions are expected to be added throughout the project.

GHGSat Constellation

GHGSat satellites are greenhouse gases monitoring satellites, which can detect and measure methane emissions at high-resolution worldwide (image credits: GHGSat series in 2022 - courtesy of GHGSat)

The first satellite launched in 2016 GHGSat-D is a demonstrator, also called “Claire”, and has a field of view of approximately 12 km x 12 km and spatial resolution of less than 50 m. Its primary instrument, Wide-Angle Fabry-Perot (WAF-P), is an advanced miniature hyperspectral SWIR imaging spectrometer for monitoring targeted greenhouse gas emitters. The secondary instrument is the Clouds & Aerosols (C&A) VNIR sensor. WAF-P measures vertical column densities of CO2 and CH4, while C&A measures interference from clouds and aerosols in the WAF-P field of view.

The following satellites launched in 2020, 2021 and 2022, known as GHGSat-Cx, are optimized for methane observations, where “x” stands for all the five satellites launched after GHGSat-D, which have common instrument parameters: GHGSat-C1, known as “Iris”, launched in 2020, GHGSat-C2, known as “Hugo”, launched in 2021, and GHGSat-C3 (Luca), GHGSat-C4 (Penny) and GHGSat-C5 (Diako) launched in 2022.

GHGSat-Cx primary instrument, Wide-Angle Fabry-Perot (WAF-P), is an advanced miniature hyperspectral SWIR imaging spectrometer for monitoring targeted greenhouse gas emitters. The secondary instrument is a visible light auxiliary camera, providing higher resolution imagery to improve image alignment and georeferencing. The instruments have a field of view of approximately 12 km x 12 km and spatial resolution of 25 m. Their WAF-P measures vertical column densities of CH4.

Several changes were made to the primary payload for GHGSat-Cx and following missions to improve upon the performance of GHGSat-D. These include upgrades to further mitigate stray light, ghosting, spectral bandpass inefficiencies, and radiation effects.

GHGSat-D Documentation

Find out more about GHGSat constellation and data.

GCOM-C

GCOM is seen as a follow-up programme to ADEOS-II (launched in December 2002) with the overall objective to contribute to global change research through long-term (> 10 years) sustained observations with corresponding data sets. The JAXA Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) consists of a constellation of two medium-sized spacecraft with the provisional names of GCOM-W (for Water Cycle studies) and GCOM-C (for Climate studies).

The GCOM-C satellites carry a Second Generation Global Imager (SGLI), an advanced multi-purpose Visible and Near InfraRed (VNIR) Imager. The first satellite in this series, GCOM-C1, was successfully launched in December 2017.

Within the EDAP LR Optical Missions domain, also a quality assessment of the land and ocean products has been conducted.

Provider

Instrument

Status

JAXA

Second-generation Global Imager (SGLI):

1) Visible and Near InfraRed Radiometer (SGLI-VNR) with 13 channels

2) Infrared Scanner (SGLI-IRS) with 6 channels in SWI (Short-Wave Infrared) and TIR (Thermal Infra-Red)

GCOM-C/Shikisai was successfully launched on 23 December 2017. JAXA started the observation with SGLI in January 2018 and continues its nominal observation operation.

GCOM-C Documentation

Technical Note on Quality Assessment for GCOM-C

TanSat

TanSat (also known as CarbonSat) was launched in December 2016 as part of the Chinese space program. It is the first mini-satellite of China dedicated to the carbon dioxide (CO2) detection and monitoring in the Earth's atmosphere, and is equipped with two dedicated instruments; the Carbon Dioxide Spectrometre (CDS) and the Cloud and Aerosol Polarimetry Imager (CAPI).

CAPI is a wide field of view moderate resolution imaging spectrometre with polarisation-sensitive channels, and collects data concurrently with CDS to compensate for errors in the spectral data caused by clouds and aerosols.

The main objective of the TanSat mission is to retrieve the atmosphere column-averaged CO2 dry air mole fraction (XCO2) with precisions of 1% (4 ppm) on national and global scales. The scientific goal of the project is to improve the understanding on the global CO2 distribution and its contribution to the climate change, and also to monitor the CO2 variation on seasonal time scales.

Provider	Instrument	Status
MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology) CMA (China Meteorological Administration) CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences)	1) Cloud and Aerosol Polarization Imager (CAPI): 5-channel UV/VIS/NIR/SWIR radiometre with three polarisations in two channels. 2) Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide Grating Spectrometre (ACGS): Three-band NIR/SWIR grating spectroradiometre.	TanSat was launched in December 2016, in-orbit and calibration tests were completed in the summer of 2017

TanSat Documentation:

Technical Note on Quality Assessment for TANSAT

GOSAT Series

The GOSAT (Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite) series is composed of two environment-monitoring satellites developed by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) dedicated to the observation of greenhouse gases.

The first GOSAT satellite (IBUKI) was launched on 23 January 2009. Its payload is composed of two instruments: TANSO-FTS (Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observation - Fourier Transform Spectrometer) and TANSO-CAI (Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observation - Cloud and Aerosol Imager) to measure methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, ozone and aerosol.

GOSAT-2, also known as "IBUKI-2", was launched on 29 October 2018 and carries enhanced versions of the instruments aboard the original GOSAT and provides data continuity: TANSO-FTS-2 and TANSO-CAI-2. GOSAT-2 aims to gather observations of greenhouse gases with higher levels of accuracy via even higher-performance onboard observation sensors.

GOSAT Series Documentation:

Technical Note on Quality Assessment for GOSAT-2

Find out about GOSAT Satellites Series

Spire

Spire Global's constellation of over 90+ nanosatellites is designed, built, and operated by Spire European headquarters in Luxembourg. With a diversified launch manifest and the capacity to build up to two satellites per week, Spire's constellation continues to grow. The company continues to launch additional satellites and add new payloads to the constellation; the first launch took place on 3 August 2013.

The Lemur satellites are placed in low-Earth orbit (generally around 500km so that they naturally de-orbit) at various inclinations, including equatorial, sun-synchronous and inclinations in between, which gives global coverage and the ability to listen to every point on Earth more than 100 times per day. They are scheduled to be retired and replaced every two to three years.

Two different techniques are analysed: the GNSS-RO (Global Navigation Satellite System - Radio Occultation) and the GNSS-R (Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry).

In the GNSS-RO (Global Navigation Satellite System - Radio Occultation) method, the signal transmitted by a GNSS satellite can be received by the LEO satellite (SPIRE constellation) passing through the Earth’s atmosphere in a limb sounding geometry. These measurements provide unique temperature, pressure, and moisture vertical soundings through the atmosphere, similar to the type of data collected by a weather balloon. Rather than data being available only twice per day from specific sites, GNSS-RO utilizes Spire's satellite constellation to collect soundings 24/7 on a global basis and over remote regions like the oceans and the poles.

GNSS-R (GNSS-Reflectometry) involves making measurements of the reflections from the Earth using navigation signals from the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Using GNSS-R reflections from the ocean, we retrieve sea surface roughness and near surface wind from the measured intensity of the reflected signal.

Spire Documentation:

Find out about Spire

Vodafone

Vodafone is a leading telecommunications company operating in Europe and Africa. Due to rapid environmental changes caused by climatic crisis, in late 2022 Vodafone started pilot project called Network as a sensor that provides ground-based atmospheric data. The climatic change, natural disasters and weather related events are impacting communities and businesses, threatening the public health, causing economic losses, and forcing the mass migrations.

Real time and high resolution environmental data can grant impactful solutions for the integration of mitigation measures; long term risk assessments, (like the prediction of future non-linear climate patterns); and the introduction of early warning systems.

Network as a sensor project exploit the Vodafone's telecommunications infrastructure, which ensures widespread territorial coverage (hyper-local), rural coverage, real-time and high resolution information.

Vodafone provides three different atmospheric products:

Meteorological data: atmospheric sensors providing high resolution and real time data of local temperature, pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and direction.
Air quality data: high resolution and real time data of air pollution concentrations (carbon dioxide 𝐶𝑂2, nitric oxide 𝑁𝑂, nitrogen dioxide 𝑁𝑂2, ozone 𝑂3, particulate matter 𝑃𝑀1, 2.5 etc.)
Precipitation intensity data: retrieval of rain intensity from wireless links (virtual rain gauges).

Vodafone Documentation:

Technical Note on Vodafone Air Quality Data Assessment Validation

Atmospheric Missions

Overview