Two next-generation satellite missions announced Thursday will help NASA better understand Earth and improve capabilities to foresee environmental events and mitigate disasters.
“NASA uses the unique vantage point of space to study our home planet to deliver life-saving data into the hands of disaster response and decision-makers every day for the benefit of all, while also informing future exploration across our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By understanding Earth’s surface topography, ecosystems and atmosphere, while also enabling longer range weather forecasting, these missions will help us better study the extreme environments beyond our home planet to ensure the safety of astronauts and spacecraft as we return to the Moon with the Artemis campaign and journey onward to Mars and beyond.”
These two missions were selected for continued development as part of NASA’s Earth System Explorers Program, which conducts principal investigator-led Earth science missions based on key priorities laid out by the science community and national needs. The program is designed to enable high-quality Earth system science investigations to focus on previously identified key targeted observables.
The STRIVE (Stratosphere Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-resolved light Explorer) mission will provide daily, near-global, high-resolution measurements of temperature, a variety of Earth’s atmospheric elements, and aerosol properties from the upper troposphere to the mesosphere – at a much higher spatial density than any previous mission. It also will measure vertical profiles of ozone and trace gasses needed to understand the recovery of the ozone layer. The data collected from STRIVE would support longer-range weather forecasts, an important tool in protecting coastal communities, where nearly half the world’s population lives. The mission is led by Lyatt Jaeglé at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The EDGE (Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer) mission will observe the three-dimensional structure of terrestrial ecosystems and the surface topography of glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice. The mission will provide an advancement beyond the measurements currently recorded from space by NASA’s ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2) and GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation). The data collected by EDGE will measure conditions affecting land and sea transportation corridors, terrain, and other areas of commercial interest. The mission is led by Helen Amanda Fricker at the University of California San Diego.
The selected missions will advance to the next phase of development. Each mission will be subject to confirmation review in 2027, which will assess the progress of the missions and the availability of funds. If confirmed, the total estimated cost of each mission, not including launch, will not exceed $355 million with a mission launch date of no earlier than 2030.
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