The NCEO and CEOI held a joint meeting in June 2016 to consider the future evolution of the Copernicus Space Segment with a number of speakers from science and industry. The meeting took place on 29th June 2016 during the NCEO 2016 Science Conference, held at the University of Warwick Conference Centre.
The success of Copernicus has already led to a discussion of the evolution of the Copernicus Space Component (CSC), with the expectation that some development activities will be funded at this year’s C-MIN as part of the EOEP-5 programme.
There are essentially two evolution routes foreseen, one beyond 2030 but another at the mid-term of 2024/25. This mid-term evolution is seen to be driven by new emerging priorities and will be actively studied by Copernicus and ESA through Task Forces. From ESA descriptions, the concepts need not be mature at this stage and EOEP activities will aim to raise the TRL of the relevant missions.
The current list of high priority candidate missions are:
- a CO2 mission (imaging spectrometer) akin to Carbonsat
- a high spatial resolution thermal i/r mission akin to Landsat-8
- an ice mission using interferometric SAR system akin to Cryosat follow-on
- a hyperspectral imaging system (Chris-Proba would be the UK prototype)
- a soil moisture mission akin to a SMOS follow-on
A report from the meeting, which was presented to the UK Space Agency EO Advisory Committee, may be requested from the CEOI Director (Mick Johnson – mick.johnson@airbus.com)
Agenda and presentations
| Presentation Title | Speaker |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Mick Johnson (CEOI Director) |
| An observational view on current and future operation of the CAMS services | Richard Engelen (ECMWF) |
| Carbon Dioxide Missions - The need for an operational CO2 mission | Hartmut Boesch (NCEO) |
| Greenhouse gas instrument concepts | Andy Vick (UK ATC) |
| Polar Missions - Cryosat follow-on | Andy Shepherd (CPOM) |
| Operational polar services | Andy Fleming (BAS) |
| High resolution Thermal IR Missions - The need for a high resolution, thermal imaging mission | John Remedios |
| Microwave Missions - The need for science and operational soil moisture products | France Gerard (CEH) |
| UK passive microwave capability | Yvonne Munro (Airbus DS) |
| Limb Sounding Missions | Martyn Chipperfield |
| Hyperspectral Visible Missions - Solar band hyperspectral instruments | Dan Lobb (SSTL) |