Sener Aeroespacial has signed a contract to supply scanners, calibration mechanisms, and electronics for the Forum mission (Far-Infrared Outgoing Radiation Understanding and Monitoring), which will be the ninth Earth Explorer mission by the European Space Agency (ESA). By measuring the radiation emitted into space by the Earth, this mission will provide new insights into the amount of planetary radiation and how to control it. This will lead to improvements in the climate models and, thus, to further precision in climate change assessments and climate prediction.
The mechanisms supplied by Sener Aeroespacial will allow sequencing of the regular calibration and scanning points of the atmosphere’s surface in an automated way. As a result, it will allow for building a complete map of the surface and monitoring its evolution over time, with the aim of understanding how temperature is regulated on the surface.
Pablo Campo, Project Manager of the Forum’s Mechanisms, comments that “the aim of this mission is to obtain unknown information on the behavior of the climate and global warming." It involves studying an infrared band that is not covered by any other Earth observation satellite in order to regulate the climate. We will be able to map the heat balance of the atmosphere and see, layer by layer and component by component, how much heat the Earth receives and stores from the Sun and how much it emits back into space. ESA has made this mission urgent.
Sener Aerospace has experience with similar mechanisms, such as the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellite’s scanner. The insights obtained in this program will enable the team at Sener Aerospace to develop this system in an extremely short time, in line with the mission’s urgency.
Sener Aerospace has been a benchmark in the international space industry since 1967 and has provided equipment and systems to over 1,500 satellites and space vehicles on the telecom market, as well as nearly 300 devices and systems on board NASA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos missions, all with a 100% reliability rate. Among its main programs, important ESA and NASA missions stand out, such as HRE, SEOSAT/Ingenio, CHIME, LSTM, Hubble, Rosetta, SMOS, Pléiades, Herschel&Planck, JUICE, Athena, Solar Orbiter, Proba-3, Gaia, BepiColombo, ExoMars, Curiosity, Euclid, LISA Pathfinder, MTG, FLEX, LOP Gateway, Mars2020, Earth Explorers, COPERNICUS and Galileo; in Science, with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the telescopes William Herschel, EST, and ELT are particularly noteworthy; and in the commercial market, as the supplier of the main international manufacturers of communications satellites, as well as in New Space (constellations Spainsat NG, Globalstar 2G, O3B, Iridium NEXT, OneWeb, OneSat) and in launchers and vehicles like ATV, IXV, ARIANE 6, VEGA, Verta and Space Rider.
Click here to learn more about the ninth Earth Explorer mission by the European Space Agency (ESA).
