The Living Planet Programme is a programme within the European Space Agency which is managed by the Earth Observation Programmes Directorate. LPP consists of two classes of Earth observation missions including research missions known as Earth Explorers, and the Earth Watch class of missions whose objective is to develop support operational applications such as numerical weather forecasting or resource management.
List of Earth Explorers missions
Selected missions
Currently there are nine approved Earth Explorer missions, four of which are in orbit and operating:
EarthCARE – Earth Clouds Aerosols and Radiation Explorer will examine the formation and effects of clouds. Due to launch in June 2022.
BIOMASS – designed to calculate the amount of carbon stored in the world's forests, and to monitor for any changes over the course of its five-year mission. Due to launch in October 2022.
FLEX – the FLuorescence EXplorer mission will globally monitor steady-state chlorophyll fluorescence in terrestrial vegetation. It is planned to launch in mid-2024.
The competition for the Earth Explorer 11 mission will occur in the early 2020s. A call for proposal ideas was released on 25 May 2020, with the deadline for submission on 4 December 2020. The winning candidate is projected to launch in 2031 or 2032.
Non-selected missions
Past candidate missions that were not selected include:
CoReH2O – a mission to study key characteristics in terrestrial snow, ice, and water cycles and their relations to climate change and variability. Competed with BIOMASS and PREMIER for the Earth Explorer 7 mission opportunity.
PREMIER – a mission to study atmospheric processes related to trace gas, radiation, and chemical compositions in the mid to upper troposphere and lower stratosphere in order to understand their role on climate change. Competed with BIOMASS and CoReH2O for the Earth Explorer 7 mission opportunity.
CarbonSat – a mission to determine the global distributions of carbon dioxide and methane and their impact on climate change. Competed with FLEX for the Earth Explorer 8 mission opportunity.
SKIM – a mission to measure ocean-surface currents using the Doppler technique, in order to improve understanding of the ocean current dynamics behind the hydrological and geochemical cycles. Competed with FORUM for the Earth Explorer 9 mission opportunity.
