On-Going and Planned Mission Concept Studies for the Preparation of Future ESA Earth Observation Satellites

This paper will present the status of the on-going and planned mission concept studies in the period 2023 to 2025 in the frame of the ESA’s Future Earth Observation Programme (FutureEO).The European Space Agency (ESA) is conducting preparatory activities on innovative Earth Observation (EO) missions to foster better scientific understanding of the Earth system through research missions, respond to the requirements of the operational users via operational missions and assess the potential of "Newspace" approach with smallsat Earth Observation concepts to boost innovation through the Φsat missions.ESA’s program of EO research missions comprises Earth Explorers, Scouts and Mission of Opportunity. Earth Explorer missions objective is to advance Earth science by providing answers to key scientific questions on the Earth system. Up to date, five Earth Explorers have been launched and another five are in different stages of development. ESA’s Earth Explorer 11 mission candidates (CAIRT, Nitrosat, SEASTAR and WIVERN) are undergoing Phase 0 activities while preparatory activities to study mission concepts for the Earth Explorer 12 are expected to start in 2024.Missions of Opportunity are research missions implemented under cooperation frameworks with Space Agencies outside Europe and Canada. Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM) is a candidate Mission of Opportunity for ESA-NASA cooperation in the framework of MAGIC (MAss change and Geosciences International Constellation).Scouts are small budget research mission based on small satellites or CubeSats, implemented in three years and complementing Earth Explorers. Two mission concepts, TANGO and NanoMagSat, are currently undergoing risk retirement activities.Preparatory activities for operational mission are underway for the next generation of Sentinels in the frame of the Copernicus programme (e,g. Sentinel-2 Next Generation and Sentinel-3 Next Generation Optical, which are currently in phase 0) in close coordination with the European Commission). Preparatory activities are planned in the coming years for the next generation of meteorological missions (Meteosat 4 th Generation and EPS/MetOp 3 rd Generation) in close coordination with EUMETSAT.Φsat missions are CubeSat missions aimed to demonstrate radical and new technologies or remote sensing concepts in space, such as Φsat -2, which is currently under development and is focused on onboard Artificial Intelligence applications.