EarthCARE solar wing

ESA’s upcoming EarthCARE satellite mission has just taken a big stretch. Engineers at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre have gently unfolded this new satellite’s huge five-panel solar wing to test that it will deploy correctly once it is in space.

EarthCARE will soon be launched to answer some critical scientific questions related to the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface. This delicate balance is an important factor in regulating Earth’s temperature.

For EarthCARE to deliver the measurements that are needed to make this important step forward in atmospheric science, it carries a suite of instruments, namely an atmospheric lidar, a Doppler cloud radar, a multispectral imager and a broad-band radiometer, which are powered in turn by this mammoth 11-m-long solar wing.