TRUTHS

Mission Summary

The TRUTHS Mission aims to enhance our ability to estimate the Earth’s radiation budget by an order of magnitude, through direct measurement of the Earth’s incoming and outgoing radiation and enhanced performance of other satellites.

Many satellites collect data, measuring how our planet is changing, but as they orbit the Earth the calibration of their instruments gradually drifts, making the measurements they send back less accurate, despite on-board recalibration systems and the use of ground targets for re-calibration.

The TRUTHS satellite will be a calibration laboratory in space, increasing the accuracy of calibration of orbiting satellites by up to 10 times, upgrading the performance of the whole Earth Observation (EO) system. It will benchmark global climate measurements with uncertainty levels that are small enough that future change can be detected in as short a time as possible.

Video caption: TRUTHS will measure incoming and reflected solar radiation 10 times more accurately than is currently possible. This enables TRUTHS to increase confidence in data from other EO satellites through in-flight cross-calibration.

TRUTHS will give the world a new reference sensor delivering a capability to inter-calibrate different imaging satellites in a way that has not been possible before.
Professor John Remedios, NCEO Director.

Instrument payload

TRUTHS stands for Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial- and Helio- Studies. The satellite will carry a hyperspectral imager to take detailed measurements of incoming radiation from the Sun as well as radiation reflected from the Earth, improving our understanding of climate change and the changing temperature of the Earth.

Mission facts

TRUTHS Mission website
Provisional Launch Date: 2030
Mission duration: 5 years
Funding Agency: Led by the UK Space Agency (UKSA) in partnership with several European states. Delivered by the European Space Agency (ESA)