Nov. 24, 2015

The Earth Observation Program Board of the European Space Agency has chosen the FLuorescence EXplorer (FLEX) mission as the eighth Earth Explorer. Launch is scheduled for 2022.

The FLEX fluorescence explorer will be the next Earth exploration mission by the European Space Agency, according to an official decision made during the ESA Earth Observation Program Board that has just closed in Paris.
The countries participating in EOEP (the Earth Observation Envelop Program) selected the FLuorescence EXplorer(FLEX) project as the eighth Earth Explorer mission (EE8) on the recommendation of ESAC (the Earth Science Advisory Committee).

The result was eagerly awaited by the Italian scientific community, which is represented on the Mission Advisory Board by Professor Francesco Miglietta (IBIMET-CNR). It also met with enthusiasm at the Information Day on the ESA Earth Observation Envelope Programme: progress and opportunities for the Italian scientific community held in ASI's headquarters on 13 May this year.
The innovative FLEX "mission" is of considerable interest to the Earth Observation community and will involve studying terrestrial vegetation using high resolution chlorophyll fluorescence measurements taken from space. After its launch, currently scheduled for 2022, the FLEX satellite will orbit in tandem with one of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellites in order to optimise its measurement and sensor systems.

Jan Woerner, ESA's Director General, said that "With the selection of the FLEX mission, ESA Member States have continued to show their determination to provide essential data to the scientific community to better understand our planet while at the same time serving society".
In 2009, FLEX was selected alongside the CARBONSATmission from among 31 proposals submitted in response to ESA's Call for Mission Opportunity.

Since then, the research and preparation activities (Phase A/B1) of the two missions have been conducted side-by-side. The results of these studies were presented to the scientific community at the Earth Explorer-8 Selection User Consultation Meeting (UCM) held in Krakow in September 2015. The Earth Science Advisory Committee (ESAC) subsequently unanimously recommended continuing with the FLEX mission, indicating imaging spectroscopy as an important and strategic asset for applications in several areas: agriculture, forestry, fishing and the marine environment, fire-fighting, climate change (in particular aspects that lead to slow vegetation decay), changing ecosystems and analysing productivity: all research areas that are very active on a national level.

Italy's interest in FLEX is also due to its links to the PRISMA hyper-spectral mission, which will provide good space resolution measurements for a more targeted and better understanding of information on fluorescence and photosynthesis.
The FLEX program will move onto Phase B2 activities in 2016, while launch is scheduled for 2022.
The FLEX mission is therefore of considerable interest for the Italian Earth Observation community, both for its scientific contents and its relation to our technological developments.

As mentioned above, Italy is represented on the FLEX Mission Advisory Board by Professor Francesco Miglietta, marking how Italian scientific prowess in this field is renowned on an international level (scientists on the MAB are chosen by ESA), while Italian company SELEX took part in the studies for the A/B phase of the payload in one of the two industrial clusters working side-by-side.
The next step will be the tender for conducting the mission: we hope Italy will continue to play an important role in both the scientific leadership and developing the payload and satellite.