ESA Open Invitation To Tender AO8317 
Open Date: 17/07/2015
Closing Date: 18/09/2015

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 15.155.04
Prog. Ref.: EOEP-4 EO Prep. Acti
Budget Ref.: E/0092-E4 – EOEP-4 EO Prep. Acti
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+LU+CZ+RO+PL+CA
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of EO Programmes
Department: Science, Appl & Future Technologies Dept
Division: Future Missions Division
Contract Officer: Tchoualack, Cendrine
Last Update Date: 17/07/2015
Update Reason: Tender issue

Following the selection in 1999 of the first Earth Explorer Core mission, GOCE (Gravity field and steady state Ocean Circulation Explorer), the European Space Agency has initiated in 2003 activities on future gravity missions with a study on observation techniques for solid Earth missions, and has continued this effort in recent years through several system studies and technology development activities. The science workshops held in 2007 (in ESTEC) and 2009 (in Graz), have identified the objectives of a Next-Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM), so to provide the temporal variations of the Earths gravity field over a time span of several years with high spatial resolution (i.e. ~100 km, comparable to that provided by GOCE, whereas it is about ~500 km for GRACE) and higher temporal resolution than GRACE, which is limited to ~1 month intervals between successive gravity field maps. Even though many aspects of NGGM concepts were addressed along previous studies, a number of issues are still open or not tackled in details. Therefore the proposed study – Consolidation of the system concept for the Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM), has as main objective the analysis and first consolidation of requirements, taking in account all the updated inputs/requirements of the scientific studies and technology activities. Then the consolidation of the system architecture shall be achieved, with a view to minimise the programmatic challenges (development time, cost), together with the analysis of critical technologies and the definition of required development activities / roadmap.

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