Contract Awarded for Development of ESA Harmony Mission
OHB Selected as Prime Contractor for Development of the Spacecraft
ESA has selected a prime contractor for its 10th Earth Explorer mission planned for 2029. OHB System AG, a subsidiary of the space and technology group OHB SE, will be responsible for the management of the industrial consortium as well as the development and construction of two new Earth observation satellites part of ESA's FutureEO program. The contract has a value of €280 million (≈$304 million).
“By providing a diverse array of high-resolution measurements of motion occurring at or near Earth's surface, we fully expect Harmony to build on the success of our other Earth Explorer missions."
Simonetta Cheli, ESA
OHB is to develop two Earth observation satellites for the Harmony mission. The satellites will join the Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite in space to fly in tandem and exploit its transmitted radar signals. Both Harmony satellites carry a passive synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument to be built by Thales Alenia Space and a multi-view thermal infrared (TIR) instrument built by ABB from Canada. The industrial consortium currently consists of some 45 companies and will be expanded by around 10 companies through further tenders.
“This is the first mission for which OHB will combine a radar instrument and an optical payload on one satellite. Technically, this is a major challenge. At the same time, to fly the first multistatic radar mission is exciting; two new satellites from us are flying with a Copernicus satellite, Sentinel-1, and would need to synchronize their radar signal," said Harmony project manager Agustina Alvarez Toledo.
The two Harmony satellites will fly in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 693 kilometers (≈430 miles). The aim is to observe small-scale movement and deformation fields of the ocean surface, glaciers and ice sheets, sea ice and the solid Earth.
“By providing a diverse array of high-resolution measurements of motion occurring at or near Earth's surface, we fully expect Harmony to build on the success of our other Earth Explorer missions," said Simonetta Cheli, ESA Director of Earth Observations Program who signed the contract for ESA. "These missions have made significant contributions to gaps in our knowledge of how Earth works. And now, Harmony is poised to further enhance our understanding by delivering valuable data that will benefit Earth system science and climate research. We are thrilled to award the industrial contract, worth over €280 million, to OHB System AG as prime contractor for the two Harmony Satellites.”
For the oceans, Harmony will enable the characterization and quantification of small-scale ocean dynamics to understand sub-mesoscale circulation and vertical pumping processes. In terms of sea ice drift velocity and deformation, Harmony observations will help to better estimate sea ice roughness and thickness and thus support the development of sea ice models for forecasting and mass balance studies. This will also allow the dynamics of the sea ice and the processes in the marginal zone of the ice to be recognized and understood more precisely in future.
In addition, the data will close existing gaps in the observation of temporal changes in the volume and mass of glaciers and ice caps and their contribution to sea level change. The deformation and flow dynamics of ice sheets and glaciers will also be investigated, as well as the processes that influence their stability and dynamic response to climate change.
In monitoring solid land, Harmony will help to quantify deformation fields and topography changes, such as tectonic changes and elevation changes on volcanoes. The data from the Harmony mission will later be used for land monitoring, disaster and crisis management, geo-resources and geo-risks, the marine environment and coastal waters.