News
CRYOSAT+ CRYOSPHERE: Call for Proposal is now open for competitive tender
1 June 2012
The ITT on the STSE, CRYOSAT+ CRYOSPHERE, Ref. AO 1-7158 in ESA EMITS, was issued 1 June 2012 with a closing date of 26 July 2012.
The European Space Agency (ESA) hereby invites all interested companies from all eligible STSE participating countries to submit a tender for the CRYOSAT+ CRYOSPHERE procurement. If companies are not yet registered as an ESA bidder, they are invited to obtain access to EMITS by completing a questionnaire, which can be found at the indicated URL below.
ESA's Earth Explorer CryoSat mission is dedicated to precise monitoring of the changes in the thickness of marine ice floating in the polar oceans and variations in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that overlie Greenland and Antarctica. The CryoSat-2 spacecraft was launched on 8 April 2010.
With the effects of a changing climate fast becoming apparent, particularly in the polar regions, it is increasingly important to understand exactly how Earth's ice fields are responding. Diminishing ice cover is frequently cited as an early casualty of global warming and since ice plays an important role regulating climate and sea level, the consequences of change are far reaching.
In order to understand fully how climate change is affecting these remote but sensitive regions, there remains an urgent need to determine exactly how the thickness of the ice, both on land and floating in the sea, is changing. By addressing this challenge, the data delivered by the CryoSat mission will complete the picture and lead to a better understanding of the role ice plays in the Earth system.
The ultimate target of CryoSat+ is to create a solid scientific basis for innovative science and new applications that may fully exploit the novel capabilities of the CryoSat mission beyond its primary mission objectives. The present CryoSat+ statement of work addresses only the themes relative to Cryospheric Science. A previous Invitation To Tender was dedicated to the topics of Land and Ocean. Hence, this activity will focus on two main themes:
Theme 1: Ice sheet grounding line location, ice thickness and ice mass flux.
Theme 2: Regional glacial isostatic adjustment and elevation rate corrections.
In addition to the themes above, the present ITT allows Bidders to propose alternative themes exploring innovative applications and novel potential areas for the exploitation of CryoSat data:
Theme 3: Novel applications.
Note that each Bidder may propose multiple feasibility studies addressing different themes, but always via dedicated and independent proposals for each theme. ESA plans to initiate three independent studies (one for each of the above themes).
