Earth Explorer 10 Candidate Mission Harmony

Abstract:
The Earth Explorer missions are developed and operated as part of ESA’s scientific Earth Observation Program. Harmony is one of the three mission concepts that have been selected to be studied as candidates for ESA’s Earth Explorer 10 mission. After the completing the Phase 0 study, ESA selected Harmony as the only mission concept to go forward into Phase-A. If the Phase-A study is concluded successfully, Harmony will go into implementation phase with a planned launch date in 2029. The Harmony mission consists of two receive only SAR satellites designed to fly with Sentinel-1 as illuminator for their bi-static observations. The resulting line-of-sight diversity will allow in combination with repeat-pass SAR interferometry to estimate tiny deformation rates in the solid Earth, and for land ice processes. It will also allow the retrieval of instantaneous ocean and sea ice surface velocities by using Doppler estimation techniques. Over oceans, geometry-diverse measurements of the radar backscatter will further allow the retrieval of surface (wind) stress and wave-spectra. The final paper will provide a short overview on the scientific objectives of the Harmony mission, explain the overall system concept and provide details about the SAR instrument and the expected instrument performance.