https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-proposals-for-new-line-of-earth-science-missions/QuoteWASHINGTON — NASA has picked four Earth science mission proposals for further study while separately selecting a smaller Earth science technology demonstration mission for development....NASA is separately moving forward on a smaller Earth science technology demonstration mission. The agency has selected the Gravitational Reference Advanced Technology Test In Space (GRATTIS) mission, led by the University of Florida, for development and launch. The $12 million mission will test a new sensor proposed for use on future missions to measure the Earth’s gravitational field.“Our technology will provide vital insights into the movement of water and ice across the planet,” John Conklin, principal investigator of GRATTIS at the University of Florida, in a statement. “This data is essential for monitoring droughts, assessing groundwater reserves, and understanding the impact of melting ice sheets on sea levels.”GRATTIS will use an Aries spacecraft bus provided by Apex Space and will launch on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission no earlier than October 2026.
WASHINGTON — NASA has picked four Earth science mission proposals for further study while separately selecting a smaller Earth science technology demonstration mission for development....NASA is separately moving forward on a smaller Earth science technology demonstration mission. The agency has selected the Gravitational Reference Advanced Technology Test In Space (GRATTIS) mission, led by the University of Florida, for development and launch. The $12 million mission will test a new sensor proposed for use on future missions to measure the Earth’s gravitational field.“Our technology will provide vital insights into the movement of water and ice across the planet,” John Conklin, principal investigator of GRATTIS at the University of Florida, in a statement. “This data is essential for monitoring droughts, assessing groundwater reserves, and understanding the impact of melting ice sheets on sea levels.”GRATTIS will use an Aries spacecraft bus provided by Apex Space and will launch on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission no earlier than October 2026.
Launch vehicle: Falcon 9Launch date: October 2026Orbital altitude: 550 kmOrbital inclination: 97°Mission duration: 60 monthsOrbital life: 5 years
In addition, GITAI is preparing for an in-orbit service demonstration. The company plans to launch a 500 kg-class satellite in October of 2026 along with a target satellite to demonstrate proximity operations, docking, and life extension tasks. Nakanose said GITAI has already secured funding for the mission and a launch contract with SpaceX.
Scheduled to be sent into orbit at the close of 2026 via a SpaceX rocket, Hibiscus is a new type of satellite that will bring down the cost of thermal imaging, opening the benefits of ultra-high resolution heat mapping to a wide range of applications. This could range from agricultural uses, where thermal pictures can assess irrigation performance, to security cases with heat mapping of vehicles, to sustainability planning with urban energy use monitoring. Equipped with a high-resolution camera, Hibiscus will capture thermal images accurate to +/- half a degree centigrade, with area precision down to the size of a car.[...]“With our telescopes, you will be able to get four times better resolution per unit cost, meaning that you can match the current state-of-the-art in thermal imaging from space using a satellite the size of a microwave,” explains Marco Gomez-Jenkins, CEO, SuperSharp. “If our clients need higher image resolution further still, we can scale up to a larger platform with a larger version of our telescope to capture the sharpest thermal images available in the market.”
UK-based SuperSharp, part of the Satlantis group, has selected Kongsberg NanoAvionics’s MP42 microsatellite platform for a first-of-its-kind Thermal InfraRed (TIR) mission called Blue Moon. The mission will embark SuperSharp’s flagship instrument HIBISCUS, an 80kg payload, onboard NanoAvionics’ flight-proven MP42 satellite bus. The launch is scheduled for the second half of 2026 onboard a SpaceX’s Transporter rideshare service.[...]HIBISCUS can capture Long-Wave InfraRed (LWIR) imagery at a spatial resolution of three metres. The data generated by this category-defining satellite will support applications in the field of climate resilience, such as urban heat monitoring, as well as those in the domain of national security. It aims also to enable new applications in these fields.
Exolaunch today announced a new multi-launch agreement (MLA) with South Korean satellite manufacturer Nara Space. The agreement, which spans from 2025 through 2028, solidifies a partnership to deploy several 12U and 16U satellites in orbit during SpaceX rideshare missions, with options to launch additional satellites ranging from 3U to 16U in size across the contract term. [...]Under this new agreement, Exolaunch will support the deployment of Nara Space's expanding satellite programs and customer missions, including the Observer and Narsha series. Following the launch of Observer-1B, Narsha, a methane-monitoring satellite, is scheduled for deployment in 2026 as the first step toward a full-scale global constellation.
The NarSha project, which will include the K3M demonstration microsatellite, aims to build a constellation of at least a dozen satellites for a global infrastructure for monitoring point sources of methane in near real time and with spatial resolution at the local level. The project consortium includes: Nara Space Technology (the leader), Seoul National University and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. Funding has already been secured for the project, and a demonstration satellite is scheduled for launch in the fourth quarter of 2026.The K3M microsatellite will be equipped with an optical instrument for detecting methane plumes in the visible (VIS), near-infrared (NIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) bands. The spectral resolution of the imaging instrument is expected to be as low as less than 1 nanometer, and the minimum spatial resolution (GSD) at an altitude of 500 km is 30 meters. The mass of the satellite will be a minimum of 32 kg, and the size is 16U, which means it will consist of 16 cubes measuring 10 cm x 10 cm x 11.35 cm.
