Successful launch of IOD/IOV satellite!

On Friday July 25th, 2025, at 11:03 p.m. local time (02:03 a.m. UTC, 04:03 a.m. CEST, on July 26th, 2025), MicroCarb satellite, were launched from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. The launch was performed using an Arianespace operated Vega C rocket. MicroCarb, was placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 650 km and separated 1 hour and 41 minutes after lift-off.

The CNES' MicroCarb mission is designed to map sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the most important greenhouse gas, on a global scale. The satellite's dispersive spectrometer instrument will measure atmospheric concentration of CO₂ globally with a high degree of precision.

Read this: Europe’s first step towards monitoring human-caused emissions

An IOD/IOV funded launch

Backed by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, the MicroCarb mission received critical support through the In-Orbit Demonstration/Validation (IOD/IOV) initiative—an essential stepping stone for Europe’s space research and innovation community. 

The EU IOD/IOV programme gives a unique opportunity to all entities (companies, research organisations, universities, etc.) who need to demonstrate or validate a new technology in the real Space environment, before proceeding further with their developments and/or commercialization.

The EU IOD/IOV programme is open to both stand-alone experiments, that need to be aggregated on a platform, and complete satellites carrying one or several experiments. For the stand-alone experiments, the programme offers the aggregation, the launch services and up to one year of operations. For the complete satellites, the programme offers the launch services.

How to participate ? There are calls for expression of interest for all entities whishing to apply. These calls are permanently open until 15 March 2027, with two cut-off dates per year. The next cut-off date is 1 Oct 2025. After each cut-off date, the European Commission works with experts to evaluate the applications and retain those that can fit into the programme. The European Space Agency is then in charge of the implementation of the necessary procurements and technical work.

This is the third IOD/IOV launch and eighth IOD/IOV satellite so far. The first launch was the UPMSat-2 satellite in September 2020 aboard the first Vega SSMS (Small Spacecraft Mission Service) ride-share mission. The second one, in October 2023 on Vega C, was the launch of the Syndeo-1 and Syndeo-2 missions, aggregating seven IOD/IOV experiments in ISISpace (NL) cubesats, and of the ESTCube-2 and ANSER satellites.

There will be many further launches in the future, with more launch services providers involved, which will also help develop that segment of the dynamic European space industry.

• More information on MicroCarb
• More information on IOD/IOV
• IOD/IOV calls for expression of interest