The TANGO mission: A satellite tandem to measure major sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions

Jochen Landgraf,Zeger De Groot,Andrew Bell,Stephanie Rusli,Ryan Cooney,Anton Leemhuis,Tim Vemmix,James Day,Bernd Sierk,Pepijn Veefkind

doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19643

Abstract

&lt;p&gt;In this contribution, we present the Twin ANthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Observers (TANGO) mission, which is one of four candidate missions of ESA&amp;#8217;s SCOUT program for the rapid prototyping and demonstration of observation techniques and science application using small-satellites. Over the period 2024-2027, TANGO will provide the unique opportunity for the global and independent monitoring of the major emission sources of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; and CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. It will demonstrate a distributed monitoring system that can pave the way for future larger constellations of small-satellites allowing for enhanced coverage and temporal resolution. The TANGO mission consists of two agile small-satellites, each carrying one spectrometer flying in conjunction with the Copernicus Sentinel 5 mission. Regular joint TANGO and Sentinel 5 observations will be used to enhance the radiometric accuracy of the TANGO spectrometers. The first satellite measures spectral radiances in the shortwave infrared part of the solar spectrum (1.6 &amp;#181;m) to determine moderate to strong emissions of CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; (&amp;#8805; 10 Kt/yr) and CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; (&amp;#8805; 5 Mt/yr). The instrument has a field of view of 30 x 30 km&lt;sup&gt;2&amp;#160;&lt;/sup&gt;at spatial resolutions small enough to monitor individual large industrial facilities (300 x 300 m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;), with an accuracy to determine emissions on the basis of a single observation. Using the same strategy, the second satellite yields collocated NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; observations from radiance measurements in the visible spectral range, supporting plume detection and exploiting the use of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;/NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; ratio observations to estimate CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions from offshore NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; sources. TANGO will provide surface fluxes of specific emission types based on the combination of CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;, CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; observations at a high spatial resolution. In doing so, TANGO aims to uniquely complement the large current and planned Copernicus monitoring missions like Sentinel-5(P) and the CO2M High Priority Candidate Mission (HPCM) by providing unrivalled high-resolution monitoring of the major anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions at a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;

Full Text