Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), has signed an amendment to its CO2M contract (worth 169 million euros) with project prime contractor OHB System for the development and qualification of the payloads for the first two satellites in the CO2M mission, which is part of Europe’s Copernicus programme (this is the core satellite Earth-observation programme of the European Commission and a cornerstone of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) activities in this field, providing Earth-observation data for environmental protection, climate monitoring, natural disaster assessment and other social tasks).

This amendment marks a crucial milestone in the pursuit of the CO2M project to develop a European anthropogenic greenhouse-gas-monitoring capability and paves the way for the qualification and development of two CO2M mission payloads: the Protoflight Model (PFM), and the Flight Model 2 (FM2). These two payloads will be delivered mid-2024 to OHB System for integration on the two satellites (PFM and FM2) scheduled to undergo their final reviews in October 2025.

The goal of the CO2M mission is to measure human-induced atmospheric CO₂ (and methane), and thereby reduce current uncertainties in estimates of emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels at sub-continental scales. This will provide the European Union with an independent source of information with which to assess the effectiveness of public policies, and to track their impact on decarbonising Europe and meeting national emissions reduction targets.

Thales Alenia Space will deliver the payloads for the first two models (PFM and FM2) of the COM2 mission to OHB System mid-2024. Each payload will comprise three instruments: a combined CO₂/NO₂ instrument based on a near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectrometer provided by Thales Alenia Space in France; a multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) based on four identical cameras contained in a dedicated optical unit provided by Thales Alenia Space in the UK; and a cloud imager (CLIM), derived from the flight-proven ProbaV instrument, provided by OIP Sensor Systems in Belgium.