Small satellites landscape: the ESA Earth observation focus on optical mission

The number of small satellites launched every year increased steadily since 2012 up to the present days in which, every month, dozens of them are released into orbit in a routinely way. Among others, this is a clear evidence of the maturity reached by the so called “newspace” which is now ready to move from the initial pioneering phase, to a more effective and fruitful applicative phase, where also large organizations like the European Space Agency can exploit many of the benefits associated with these technologies. ESA was and is currently supporting a conspicuous number of small and nano satellite initiatives in different ways and at different levels. At unit and equipment level by promoting component miniaturization, investigating the use of Commercial Of The Shelf (COTS) as enablers for new concepts and adapting its processes to allow for a fast and efficient implementation of future space hardware and software. At higher level, ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes Directorate (ESA-EOP) has already established a roadmap for small satellites implementation as a complement to the EOP scientific and application-driven institutional missions (i.e Sentinels, High Priority Candidate Missions and Earth Explorers) as well as to exploit the benefits associated with short lifecycles and reduced costs per spacecraft: the validation of new approaches such as the enhancement of on-board data processing to include demanding tasks like Artificial Intelligence or Super Resolution; the increased temporal resolution guaranteed by the deployment of small constellations. Given the heterogeneity of the activities, ESA-EOP defined three separated programmatic lines with ad-hoc objectives. Scout Missions are based on one or several small satellites and their purpose is to demonstrate novel Earth observation techniques in Earth science and related non-commercial applications; currently 4 parallels studies are ongoing to consolidate the conceptual phase and one will be selected for flight in 2023. Φ-sat missions address innovative mission concepts, fostering novel architectures or sensing which enable user-driven science and/or applications to be realised by means of on-board processing; Φ-sat mission lifecycle is designed to be the shortest among the entire line-up, typically lasting 4 years from announcement to the end of operations allowing for fast turnovers. Φ-sat 1 is currently scheduled for launch in Q2 2020 while a second development will start within the end of the same year. The Investing in Industrial Innovation (InCubed) programme aims to support industry, under a co-funding scheme, to develop new commercially viable Earth Observation (EO) based products and services. The programme has an end-to-end (E2E) scope and so can include complete E2E mission concepts or specific upstream and/or downstream developments. All developments are based on innovative EO techniques and the aim is to reduce the barrier to entry of these developments into the commercial marketplace. Given the context described above, this paper will further describe the selection process associated with each programmatic lines and present a summary of the ongoing activities, with a specific focus on the many optical missions proposed and currently being implemented.