TRUTHS

The mission, delivered by ESA, will collect the most accurate measurements of energy coming into the Earth from the Sun, and light reflected off Earth’s surface, to help understand changes in balance (global warming) and humanity’s impact on the planet.

The mission will not only make measurements itself, but also improve the performance of other missions through calibration from space, becoming a new ‘gold standard’ reference for climate measurements. will allow rigorous testing of model forecasts to support decision-making on climate strategies. The mission will enable a 10-fold improvement in accuracy of data, which will, in turn, halve the time required for making decisions and also help monitor the progress of mitigation.

Key facts

mission started development in spring 2020 with a launch date planned for 2026-28 followed by operations for a further 5-8 yrs

The mission’s hyperspectral imaging spectrometer will deliver ~5Tbytes of data a day

is an agile platform that points to observe the Sun and Moon as it passes over the poles and then continually samples the sun-lit Earth with a spatial resolution of 50m and spectrally resolved to allow detailed analysis of the Earth’s processes.

flies in a novel orbit which allows it to simultaneously view the same scene as other satellites regularly, which enables increased confidence in data from other EO satellites through in-flight reference NPL, Airbus, Teledyne e2v UK, NPL, RAL, University of Leicester, Thales Alenia Space UK, CGI IT UK, Telespazio-UK and Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station. The programme is being implemented by ESA with funding from Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Greece.