Britain to build satellite for Europe

LONDON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Britain says it will build a satellite for Europe to monitor a range of chemicals from protective gases like ozone to damaging pollutants like sulphur dioxide.

The Sentinel 5 Precursor, or S5P spacecraft, scheduled to go into orbit in 2015, will be one of a series of Earth observation satellites launched by the European Union this decade, the BBC reported Thursday.

"It's a compact satellite," Andy Jones, the project manager at British manufacturer Astrium said. "It's about one meter tall and 1.5 meters across. It's a hexagon shape with three solar arrays. S5P will be a seven-year mission but we will build the spacecraft to last for 10 years."

Astrium signed the $63 million contract with the European Space Agency in London Wednesday.

Satellites like ESA's Envisat and NASA's Aura, which monitor trace gas and aerosol data, are due to be retired and future European polar orbiting weather spacecraft are not set to be launched until 2020, officials said.

"Envisat will retire in 2013, maybe 2014, but certainly no later," Volker Liebig, ESA's director of Earth observation, said. "Sentinel 5 Precursor must therefore fill the gap until 2020."