On 7 February aboard STS 122 Atlantis, ESA astronauts Hans Schlegel of
Germany and Leopold Eyharts of France are set to deliver ESA's Columbus
laboratory to the International Space Station. Columbus is the most
important European mission to the ISS to-date, and the cornerstone of
Europe's contribution to this international endeavour. Once Columbus has
been launched, attached to the Space Station and verified, ESA will
become an active partner in the operations and use of mankind's only
permanent outpost in space.
Soon after Columbus is safely attached to the ISS, the first of the
20-tonne ATV re-supply and space-tug modules, 'Jules Verne', will be
carried into orbit from Kourou by the Ariane 5 ES launch vehicle. ATV is
the largest and most complex automated spacecraft ever developed in
Europe. Not only will it carry supplies to, and waste from, the ISS, it
can perform ISS attitude control and debris avoidance manoeuvres, and
can boost the Station's orbit to overcome the effects of atmospheric
drag. While ATV is attached to the ISS, astronauts can use its 48 m3
pressurised volume like any other part of the Station.In early 2008 the five 380kg satellites of the RapidEye constellation are due for launch on a Dnepr rocket from Baikonur. The satellites for this German commercial remote sensing company were built in Guildford by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL). Later in the year two more SSTL satellites will be launched on a Dnepr from Baikonur, boosting the resources of SSTL's Disaster Management Constellation (DMC) – UK-DMC-2 and Spain's Deimos/DMC-6.
In about April, ESA's third new mission of the year is expected to be the launch of Giove-B – the second prototype Galileo navigation satellite. It will be launched from Baikonur on a Russian Soyuz rocket with a Fregat upper stage. The payload was designed and developed in the UK by Astrium.
Around the same time, Skynet 5C, the third of Britain's new generation military communications satellites will be launched from Kourou on an Ariane 5/ECA in a twin launch with the Turksat 3A commercial satellite. Astrium in the UK is the prime-contractor for the complex Skynet 5 satellite (main industry partners are EADS Defence, Logica and Serco), and it will be operated by Paradigm Secure Communications.
In the same timeframe, another giant communications satellite developed by Astrium, Inmarsat-4C, will be launched from Baikonur on a Proton. This third of Inmarsat's new generation satellites will complete the global coverage of its new broadband mobile services.
ESA's fourth mission of the year will be the GOCE satellite due for
launch on a Rockot from Plesetsk in May. Using the well tested "drag
free" concept, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation
Explorer (GOCE) is the first Earth Explorer Core mission to be developed
as part of ESA's Living Planet Programme, and is dedicated to measuring
the Earth's gravity field and modelling the geoid with extremely high
accuracy and spatial resolution. Numbers five and six for ESA in about October will be the science corner-stone Herschel-Planck dual mission, to be launched from Kourou on an Ariane 5. The 3.3 tonne Herschel contains a massive 3.5-metre diameter mirror (Hubble's is "only" 2.4m) that will collect long-wavelength infrared radiation from some of the coolest and most distant objects in the Universe, covering the spectral range from far-infrared to sub-millimetre wavelengths. The 1.9 tonne Planck will measure the Cosmic Microwave Background. Both satellites will carry out their missions from the L2 Lagrangian point 1.5 million km from earth at a point where solar and earth gravity roughly cancel each other out.
ESA's seventh and eight missions in 2008 will be the Soil Moisture and
Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and the PROBA-2 technology missions to be carried
into orbit in a dual launch on a Rockot from Plesetsk. SMOS will measure
microwave radiation emitted from the Earth's surface at L-band (1.4 GHz)
using an interferometric radiometer. It will provide global coverage
every 3 days from its 763 km altitude sun-synchronous orbit.Other elements of an unprecedented year of European space activity include the launch of the SAR-Lupe-4 German military imaging radar satellite, the SES Astra-1M, Eutelsat Hot Bird 9 & W2M, and Telenor Thor-5 commercial satellites, and the Franco American Jason-2 altimetry mission.
2007
