04/02/2025
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Today, ESA, the Finnish government and the Finnish Meteorological Institute took the initial steps towards establishing a ‘supersite’ for Earth observation calibration and validation in Sodankylä in Finnish Lapland.
Envisaged as a joint investment, this world-class site would bring benefits to both ESA, by helping to further ensure satellites deliver accurate data over high latitude environments, and to Finland by providing Finnish businesses with new opportunities to develop and test environmental sensors and technology.
Finland became ESA’s 14th Member State in January 1995 and has participated in a wide range of ESA programmes and activities over the past 30 years, including Earth observation, space science, navigation and satellite communications. Without a national space agency of its own, Finland relies on ESA as the foundation for its space activities.
In recent years, Finland has also seen a surge in commercial companies in the space sector. This growing interest is evident in the Philab Finland innovation scheme launched by ESA in January 2025 – which focuses on commercialising space technology and funding new startup projects.
The Chairman of ESA’s Programme Board on Earth Observation (PBEO) is also Finnish: Jarkko Koskinen, Deputy Director General of the National Land Survey of Finland.
Today, Prof. Koskinen chaired the PBEO meeting, held exceptionally in Saariselkä. At the meeting, ESA unveiled that, through its research and development FutureEO programme, it would work with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and invest in a supersite for Earth observation calibration and validation in Sodankylä.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, “Over the next three years we will work closely with the Finnish Meteorological Institute to turn their Arctic Space Centre into an Earth science and calibration and validation supersite.
“The centre’s high-latitude position and being surrounded by boreal forest, which is representative of the wider circum-polar forest and tundra ecosystem, make it ideal to validate and calibrate data from our satellites as they orbit above. The new supersite will help improve the quality of satellite-based information and stimulate new services and applications relevant to the Arctic.
“This will not only bring benefits to ESA and our understanding of the forest-tundra environment, but will also provide opportunities for Finnish and European industry to develop and test new environmental sensors and technology in an Arctic setting.”
Petteri Taalas, Director General of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, added, “The new centre will significantly enhance the impact of Finland’s space activities internationally and creates growth opportunities for Finnish space activities and industry while improving scientific knowledge.”
Calibration and validation may not sound that exciting but it is critical to ensuring that satellites deliver accurate and reliable data, and that potential margins of error are understood and accounted for before such data are used to understand how the Earth system works and if and how changes are occurring.
This usually means taking independent measurements from on the ground, from towers and from aircraft to compare with data gathered by satellites in orbit.
The Finnish Arctic Space Centre is already being used for such purposes – and ESA has benefited from this infrastructure many times over the last 15 years for satellite missions such as SMOS and for many mission and instrument concepts in pre-development phases.
ESA’s Head of ESA’s Earth Observation Campaigns section, Malcolm Davidson, said, “With plans to introduce capacities to calibrate and validate microwave, multispectral and hyperspectral, and greenhouse gas observations, the expansion of the centre to a supersite would enables it to take up a major role for numerous upcoming missions.
“Such missions include the Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring mission, the Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer mission, the Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission, the Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter mission, the Radar Observing System for Europe at L-band, and the Earth Explorer FLEX mission.”
With ESA and Finland now on board with this ambitious undertaking, this will significantly enhance our understanding of the sub-Arctic and Arctic environment.
