Industrial mission partners
A team of industrial partners have collaborated with ESA to develop, build and launch the CryoSat spacecraft, a contract worth 70 million Euros to European industry.
The prime contractor for CryoSat is EADS Astrium, responsible for managing a consortium of 31 companies. EADS Astrium is Europe's leading satellite system specialist, and a subsidiary of aerospace firm EADS.
The EADS Astrium facility at Friedrichshafen in southwest Germany has built the satellite platform and integrated all the instruments. EADS Astrium is ultimately responsible for ensuring the reliability of the whole satellite.
CryoSat's main payload, the SIRAL radar altimeter, is the responsibility of Alcatel Space, a satellite solutions firm that is a subsidiary of telecoms network company Alcatel.
Applying previous experience of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and radar altimeter technology for Earth Observation - including building the altimeters used on the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 missions - Alcatel Space's facility in Toulouse in southern France has constructed the SIRAL instrument.
The French space agency CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) has contributed the Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) and Laser Retro-reflector used to precisely measure the orbital position of CryoSat in order to enhance data accuracy.
In addition, CNES is responsible for the long-term archiving of CryoSat data, carried out at its SSALTO (Segment Sol multimissions d'ALTimétrie, d'Orbitographie et de localisation precise) centre in Toulouse.
The launch is being undertaken by Eurockot Launch Services, a joint venture between EADS and Russia's Khrunichev Space Centre to provide commercial launch services into low-Earth orbit using the Rockot launch vehicle flown from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia.
