Science - 06.12.2019

1176 6 DECEMBER 2019 • VOL 366 ISSUE 6470 sciencemag.org SCIENCE

IMAGE: NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

E

ven optimists at the European Space

Agency (ESA) were startled last

week when its member governments

awarded it a €12.5 billion, 3-year bud-

get, its largest ever and more than 20%

above its previous 3 years of funding.

With the unexpected windfall, ESA will de-

velop a reusable space cargo capsule, support

the International Space Station until 2030,

and join NASA in retrieving rocks from Mars.

But one of the biggest winners, up 29% to

€1.8 billion, is Copernicus, a program sup-

porting a fleet of satellites that continuously

tracks features of Earth’s atmosphere and

surface, including the contours of the sea

surface and shifts in vegetation. The money

will help Europe expand the fleet to observe

humanmade sources of carbon dioxide (CO 2 )

on a daily basis—making ESA the only space

agency capable of monitoring pledges made

under the Paris accord to cut greenhouse

gases. Europe’s CO 2 monitoring plans are

“unparalleled,” says Christopher O’Dell, an

atmospheric scientist at Colorado State Uni-

versity in Fort Collins. “The Europeans are

just running with this.”

Just why ministers from ESA’s 22 member

states were feeling so generous at a meeting

last week in Seville, Spain, is unclear. It could

be because Europe’s economy is better than

3 years ago, or because ESA officials did a

good job talking up plans with ministers and

stakeholders, says Athena Coustenis, a plan-

etary scientist at the Paris Observatory and

chair of the European Space Sciences Com-

mittee, an advisory body. Regardless, the

only mission not to receive full funding was

Lagrange, a set of space weather satellites.

“There’s no need to kill anything,” Coustenis

says. “I’m in shock.”

ESA’s science budget, stagnant for decades,

got a 10% hike to €2.8 billion. That should

allow the agency to study black holes with

two concurrent missions, a gravitational

wave detector and an x-ray observatory

(Science, 25 October, p. 410). The explora-

tion budget was boosted by one-third, which

means ESA can launch the ExoMars rover

next year—if it can fix problems with its

parachutes in time (Science, 29 November,

p. 1061). The money will help ESA join

NASA’s Artemis program to build a Moon-

orbiting space station called the Gateway

and work toward a human presence on the

surface. It will also pay for initial work on a

complex mission to bring back samples from

Mars. NASA hopes to follow suit next year

(Science, 22 November, p. 932).

The Copernicus system of Earth-observing

Sentinel satellites also got a lot of love. This

joint venture with the European Union

provides long-lived, unbroken data sets to

government, industry, and academic users.

Existing Sentinel satellites monitor, for in-

stance, land use and sea surface height. The

first three Sentinels are now operational,

along with duplicate satellites that serve as

backups. Three more Sentinels are in the

works. When it comes to Earth observa-

tion, “Europe has the most capable fleet in

orbit,” says Martin Visbeck of the GEOMAR-

Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel,

Germany, and chair of ESA’s Advisory Com-

mittee for Earth Observation.

The funding boost ensures ESA can pro-

ceed with ambitious plans for a further set

of six candidate Sentinels, among them the

CO 2 monitoring mission. Around the time

of the Paris climate pact of 2016, the Euro-

pean Union decided that national carbon

budgets, based on disclosures from known

emitters such as power plants and cement

works, needed checking from the sky. In re-

sponse, ESA resurrected plans for Carbon-

Sat, which failed to win a launch slot in

2015, and beefed it up into a Sentinel, which

would look for the spectral absorption sig-

nals of CO 2 in infrared sunlight reflected off

Earth’s surface.

With the new funding, a CO 2 Sentinel

could launch as soon as 2025, putting Eu-

rope in position to contribute to a census of

emissions that the Paris accord says should

take place every 5 years beginning in 2023.

Carbon dioxide is “a quantity we need to

watch for years to come,” Visbeck says.

The ministers gathered in Seville appar-

By Daniel Clery

SPACE SCIENCE

Europe to lead in monitoring carbon from space

Budget hike for ESA’s Copernicus program advances satellites to monitor Paris accord cuts

IN DEPTH Satellite data could refine models that predict

carbon flows, seen here peaking in northern spring.

Published by AAAS

on December 12, 2019^

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