ESA´s premier mission candidate: System and payload overview

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing candidates for the 7^th Earth Explorer Core mission with the aim to select one of them to be launched towards the end of this decade. Earth Explorers are the backbone of the science and research element of ESA´s Living Planet Programme, providing an important contribution to the global endeavour of understanding the Earth system, particularly in view of global climate change. Six candidate missions were selected and further investigated in the preliminary assessment studies (Phase 0). A further down-selection was made after the User Consultation Meeting held in Lisbon, Portugal in January 2009. Three candidate missions (Biomass, CoReH2O and PREMIER) were selected for further feasibility investigations (Phase A). Each of the candidate missions has been defined in detail through two parallel and competing industrial studies and many complementary science and technology studies, aiming to the final down-selection in 2013, followed by the mission implementation with a planned launch in 2019. This paper will give an overview of the observation requirements, satellite, payload and general status of the PREMIER mission.