Our useful guides to UK-involved climate satellites give an introduction to each mission in lay-person’s language with links to technical & scientific information.
Missions
The UK is making crucial contributions to future and current climate satellite missions to provide essential information for effective climate action and monitoring of progress in addressing climate change from space.
Upcoming missions include TRUTHS, the first climate mission led by the UK Space Agency and implemented through the European Space Agency (ESA), MicroCarb and BIOMASS which are being designed and built using UK skills and facilities.
Discover more about each mission, the expertise of Space4Climate members involved and the pivotal role the satellites will play in gathering and supplying Earth observation data for climate decisions and climate services for adaptation and mitigation in our plain language videos. Hear directly from the world-leading scientists at the forefront of the missions and from the people building the satellite instruments in the UK.
Take a look at the short videos on our YouTube playlist.
Download our easy-to-follow Explainers, designed to introduce each mission with a focus on UK contributions and signposting to more technical and scientific information.
Data from the SWOT satellite has already exceeded expectations – find out why it is causing excitement among climate researchers, oceanographers and hydrologists
Find out about the EarthCARE climate satellite mission, a partnership between the European Space Agency and JAXA with more than 20 UK contributors
Ground-breaking French-UK climate change satellite mission showcases the UK’s world-leading carbon Earth observation capability.
Find out about the data being produced and its uses
Space4Climate’s quick guide to 17 climate satellite missions, some are on their way to a launchpad, others are awaiting a launch slot & more are in development
HydroGNSS will be the first European Space Agency Scout science mission in orbit, with a launch scheduled for 2025.
Looking at a career in space, climate or satellites? You may be surprised at how many skills other than science and data are involved too! Find out more in this new STEM resource from the UK Space Agency
The TRUTHS climate mission will be a calibration laboratory in space, decreasing uncertainty of Earth Observation data collected by satellites by up to 10 times. It is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission, conceived by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and led by the UK Space Agency, in partnership with Switzerland, Greece, the Czech … Continue reading “TRUTHS – Breakthrough Mission for Climate Data”
MicroCarb will measure atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2), determining emissions of carbon across the globe with extreme precision, even down to city level. This joint venture by the UK Space Agency and Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) will allow scientists to determine how much carbon is being absorbed and emitted by natural processes and how much … Continue reading “MicroCarb – Carbon Dioxide data for the Global Stocktake”
Dr Chris Holloway from the University of Reading takes a look at how satellite data improvements for your daily weather forecast can be used for climate action and explains why satellite missions launched now secure scientific capability for future generations.
BIOMASS is the first satellite that will study the world’s forests in 3-dimensions using a P-band tomographic radar.