Three Earth Explorer candidates go forward
ESA advances three Earth Explorer mission candidates—ECO, Keystone, and CryoRad—toward final selection for its twelfth satellite mission, targeting climate and atmospheric research.
The European Space Agency has selected three mission candidates—ECO, Keystone, and CryoRad—to advance to the next phase of development for its twelfth Earth Explorer satellite mission. The decision follows a rigorous review by the scientific community and ESA’s Advisory Committee for Earth Observation, which ranked the concepts based on scientific merit and programmatic feasibility. Each mission addresses critical gaps in Earth science, from climate monitoring to atmospheric and polar ice research.
ECO, the top-ranked mission, aims to measure the global mean Earth Energy Imbalance, a fundamental climate variable essential for quantifying climate change and assessing mitigation strategies. The mission would provide unprecedented data on this longstanding knowledge gap, aligning with ESA’s science-first approach. Keystone, the second-ranked concept, seeks to observe atomic oxygen and atmospheric constituents in the 50–250 km altitude range, while also detecting space debris metals entering the atmosphere.
CryoRad, the third candidate, focuses on directly measuring temperatures and basal conditions within polar ice sheets to improve understanding of ice-sheet dynamics and global sea level rise projections. The mission would deliver critical data for assessing future climate impacts. All three concepts were studied extensively over the past two years, demonstrating ambitious scientific goals aligned with ESA’s FutureEO programme.
The selected mission will be chosen before the next ESA Council at Ministerial level, with an expected launch in the 2036 timeframe. The Earth Explorer missions are central to ESA’s FutureEO programme, known for delivering breakthrough scientific findings and extending beyond their planned operational lifetimes due to their robust technology and open data policies.