The coming Sentinel Expansion and Next Generation mission will radically change our capacity to observe and understand the Earth system as never before.
The unprecedented potential offered by the huge synergistic opportunities offered by the combined use of the complementary data sets provided by different missions will open a new era in the way we observe and characterise the Earth system. However, exploiting such as synergistic potential will require a dedicated effort to develop the fundamental scientific understanding and basic scientific competences to ensure a scientifically sound exploration of the different data streams collectively in terms of novel synergistic methods, innovative joint retrievals, new products and advanced scientific results.
With this call ESA aims at addressing this gap and supporting the scientific community to implement a number of foundational experiments including dedicated campaigns, simulations, prototyping, scientific development and validation activities to develop the fundamental scientific basis for an advanced exploitation of the coming Sentinel Expansion and NG missions across a set of strategic scientific and application domains (Themes) where the synergistic aspects across missions and observation types are expected to bring unique and unprecedented opportunities for advance science and develop future applications.
This SUPFIX call is primarily addressing synergy (multi-mission, multi-frequency, multi-polarisation) aspects and is paving the way towards exploiting the Sentinel missions in a System of Systems (SoS) manner together with additional type of complementary payloads. Therefore, activities shall also consider the availability of additional European and non-European missions that may be flying at the timeframe of the target Sentinel missions and that may complement the data and capabilities that will be offered by the Sentinel constellation. In addition, when relevant, the future availability of Earth Explorers shall be also taken into consideration, such as Harmony Earth Explorer 10 mission, planned to take part of the Sentinel System of Systems during the first half of the next decade.
SUPFIX will focus on three of priority Themes:
- SUP Foundational Experiment for Polar Science
- SUP Foundational Experiments for Land processes
- SUP Foundational Experiments for Costal processes.
ESA plans to place up to three independent projects to address each of the above Themes.
Learn more about this Invitation To Tender on the esa-star Publication page.
Featured image : Copernicus Sentinel Expansion missions. Image credit: ESA