14 DAY TRIAL // Today, April 9, the European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded two new contracts for upcoming satellite missions to the Bremen, Germany-based venture Eurockot. This is a collaboration between the renowned European space firm Astrium and the Khrunichev Space Center, and the new documents set in charge of launching the new Swarm satellite constellation. The project reaffirms ESA's commitment to observing the planet from space, not 24 hours after the successful launch of its CryoSat-2 mission, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan.
The target of the Swarm spacecrafts will be to study our planet's magnetic field, ESA officials write on their official website. The constellation itself will be made up of three individual satellites, which will all be launched aboard the same Rockot delivery system. Experts say that, despite its modest size, the heavily-modified SS-19 Stiletto intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is capable of inserting all three components into an orbit some 490 kilometers above our planet's surface, during a single flight.
According to the Eurockot-ESA agreement, the launch will take place from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, which also housed a number of other European-led take-offs. The space agency, which aims at launching Swarm before June 2012, will place its fourth dedicated Earth Explorer satellite in orbit. The new constellation will follow on the footsteps of already-famous missions such as the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellites, and the CryoSat-2 instrument.
“We all know that for an ambitious mission such as Swarm it is of utmost importance to choose a reliable launch provider. After the successful Eurockot launches of GOCE and SMOS, we are looking forward to a full launch service that will deliver all three Swarm satellites into their orbits,” said today Volker Liebig, who is the ESA Director of Earth Observation Programs. He was speaking at an event held in Bremen, to mark the signing of the cooperation document. The CEO of Eurockot, Matthias Oehm, and the Deputy Director General of Khrunichev,Sergey Anisimov, were also in attendance.