THE EUROPEAN POLAR PLATFORM

British Aerospace (BAe) is leading a group of European industrial companies in the design and development of a multi-mission Polar Platform for the European Space Agency (ESA) through the associated Columbus Programme. There is an urgent need to understand the environment of the Earth and the increasing influence that mankind has upon it. Long term global monitoring is required to provide the necessary data upon which policy decisions can be based. The global perspective can only be provided effectively through the establishment of a long-term space based observation system. By utilising the vantage of polar orbit repeated coverage of the complete surface of the Earth can be achieved through a series of missions. The scale of such an undertaking requires an international approach. The ESA Polar Platform mission will be coordinated with those of NASA through its Earth Observing System (EOS) programme, with NASDA and other agencies. Europe through ESA has a key and leading role to play. The European Polar Platform also has other objectives in remote sensing, meteorology and research. Europe has an increasingly strong heritage in Earth Observation satellite and instrument technology through, for example, the SPOT and ERS programmes. The Polar Platform design makes maximum effective use of this heritage and the development team reflects the associated industrial expertise. Through a single spacecraft development programme the Polar Platform will provide a flexible system solution to a large number of mission objectives. A family of platform variants to meet the need to accommodate a variety of payload mission complements is achieved through a modular design both at system and subsystem level. The launch of the first ESA Polar Platform mission is planned for 1998. The industrial team has completed the platform design definition phase and is now entering the detail design and development programme, with component and long lead hardware procurement beginning during 1991. The core research payload instruments for the first mission began preparatory development from mid 1991.