ESA awards development contract for NanoMagSat

This new mission will uphold Europe’s leadership in monitoring Earth’s magnetic field and contribute to applications such as space weather hazard assessment, navigation, directional drilling, and more.

Complementing ESA’s well-established series of Earth Explorer research missions, the Scouts are small satellites that deliver value-added science, either by miniaturising existing space technologies or by demonstrating innovative observing techniques.

Notably, the Scout missions embody the principles of New Space, leveraging an agile and cost-effective development process to achieve their goals efficiently.

The contract, worth €34.6 million, for the build, launch and commissioning of NanoMagSat was signed by ESA and Open Cosmos today at the ESA Earth Observation Commercialisation Forum, which is taking place in Frankfurt, Germany.

Open Cosmos in the UK and Spain are the Prime Contractors for the mission. COMET-Aerospace in Spain, CEA-Léti in France, the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Oslo in Norway, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and the Université Paris Cité in France are all in the consortium.