Nebula Public Library

The main objectives of this project were to develop the tools and structure to enable routine EarthCARE radar and lidar observations of clouds to be assimilated in the ECMWF Numerical Weather Prediction model and to prepare for the real-time monitoring of the observations to detect instrument degradation or errors. This required adjustments of assimilation tools, such as the observation operators, observation error definition, quality control, data screening and bias correction.

This activity presents a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) simulator designed to assess the performance of bi-static SAR missions. It is a modular software able to simulate realistic SAR data (including injection of the system non-idealities), to estimate the SAR performance at radiometric and interferometric level. In order to ensure accurate measures of the bi-static performance, it simulates raw data exploiting a time-domain approach, without assumptions on the acquisition geometry. This feature makes the simulator a useful tool for the design of new SAR missions concepts.

The Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is a candidate ESA mission to the binary Near-Earth Asteroid (65803) Didymos. While its main objective is to demonstrate new technologies for future deep-space missions, AIM will also characterise for the first time a binary asteroid system, providing an understanding of its formation and of the origin of the Solar System.

The Process Exploration through Measurement of infrared and millimetre-wave Emitted Radiation (PREMIER) instrument was proposed to ESA within the framework of the 7th Earth Explorer Call. The instrument was designed to quantify dynamic, radiative, and chemical processes in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) that control the global atmospheric composition.