Where is most of our planet’s carbon dioxide generated and where is it absorbed again? CNES’s MicroCarb mission will answer these questions by mapping the world’s main carbon dioxide sources and sinks, helping scientists understand how the greenhouse gas contributes to global climate change.

MicroCarb carries an infrared spectrometer, a scientific instrument that will calculate the proportion of carbon dioxide in the air underneath it by analysing the sunlight reflected by the surface of the Earth and the oceans.

Patrice Kerhousse, ESA’s manager for the IOD/IOV programme, explains: “As the instrument measures carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, it will be generating large amounts of data, which will be transmitted to the ground stations through the satellite’s communication system.

“Receiving this data on Earth will be a Product Data Processing unit (PDP) – a system with enough power to process the large amounts of data to extract accurate carbon dioxide measurements and make them ready and accessible to the science community.”

ESA’s role in the MicroCarb mission is two-fold: the agency coordinated and procured the launch service on the Vega-C rocket, as well as supported the preparation of MicroCarb’s PDP and its integration in the ground segment. Both the launch and the PDP integration were carried out under the European Commission’s In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation (IOD/IOV) programme.