Gepubliceerd 5 dagen ago
Three mission concepts have moved one step closer to becoming ESA’s twelfth Earth Explorer: ECO, Keystone and CryoRad. For Belgium, the selection is particularly significant, as the Earth Climate Observatory (ECO) was proposed by an international team led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
ECO aims to measure the Earth’s energy imbalance: the tiny difference between the solar energy our planet absorbs and the energy it radiates back to space. This imbalance is one of the most fundamental indicators of ongoing climate change, but measuring it accurately from space remains a major scientific challenge.
ECO is one of three mission concepts still in the running to become ESA’s twelfth Earth Explorer. The proposed constellation would combine radiometers and visible and infrared imagers to measure Earth’s radiation budget and determine the planet’s energy imbalance.
Image: ESA
ECO has strong Belgian roots. The mission concept was developed by an international scientific team led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium, with contributions from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and the Belgian Climate Centre.
The two other candidates tackle very different questions. Keystone would explore the poorly observed region of the atmosphere between roughly 50 and 250 kilometres altitude, while CryoRad would directly probe temperatures and conditions deep within the polar ice sheets.
All three missions will now undergo further study before ESA selects one of them for implementation as Earth Explorer 12.
Based on: European Space Agency (ESA), Three Earth Explorer candidates go forward, 25 September 2026.