69-659: NOAA-9 , known as NOAA-F before launch, was an American weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for use in the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS). It was the second of the Advanced TIROS-N series of satellites. The satellite design provided an economical and stable Sun-synchronous platform for advanced operational instruments to measure
138-587: A 48° viewing cone, viewed in the anti-Earth direction and measured protons in four energy ranges above 370 MeV and alpha particles in two energy ranges above 850 MeV/ nucleon . The Total Energy Detector (TED) measured electrons and protons between 300 eV and 20 keV. The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) was designed to measure the energy exchange between the Earth - atmosphere system and space. The measurements of global, zonal, and regional radiation budgets on monthly time scales helped in climate prediction and in
207-499: A continuously rotating scan drum which scanned the FOV across track sequentially from horizon to horizon. Each channel made 74 radiometric measurements during each scan, and the FOV of each channel was 3 by 4.5° that covered about 40 km at the surface of Earth. The ERBE-S also viewed the Sun for calibration. NOAA-9's ERBE was one of three such instruments launched, with the other two being on
276-587: A more intense storm). Infrared pictures depict ocean eddies or vortices and map currents such as the Gulf Stream which are valuable to the shipping industry. Fishermen and farmers are interested in knowing land and water temperatures to protect their crops against frost or increase their catch from the sea. Even El Niño phenomena can be spotted. Using color-digitized techniques, the gray shaded thermal images can be converted to color for easier identification of desired information. Each meteorological satellite
345-777: A much better resolution than their geostationary counterparts due their closeness to the Earth. The United States has the NOAA series of polar orbiting meteorological satellites, presently NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 ( POES ) and NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 ( JPSS ). Europe has the Metop -A, Metop -B and Metop -C satellites operated by EUMETSAT . Russia has the Meteor and RESURS series of satellites. China has FY -3A, 3B and 3C. India has polar orbiting satellites as well. The United States Department of Defense 's Meteorological Satellite ( DMSP ) can "see"
414-447: A number of changes over its predecessors in support of its mission to gather data for weather forecasting and climate monitoring. The MTG satellites are three-axis stabilised rather than spin stabilised, giving greater flexibility in satellite and instrument design. The MTG system features separate Imager and Sounder satellite models that share the same satellite bus, with a baseline of three satellites - two Imagers and one Sounder - forming
483-723: A scatterometer and a radio-occultation instrument. The satellite service module is based on the SPOT-5 bus, while the payload suite is a combination of new and heritage instruments from both Europe and the US under the Initial Joint Polar System agreement between EUMETSAT and NOAA. A second generation of Metop satellites ( MetOp-SG ) is in advanced development with launch of the first satellite foreseen in 2025. As with MTG, Metop-SG will launch on Ariane-6 and comprise two satellite models to be operated in pairs in replacement of
552-524: A second imager satellite will operate from 9.5-deg East to perform a Rapid Scanning mission over Europe. MTG continues Meteosat support to the ARGOS and Search and Rescue missions. MTG-I1 launched in one of the last Ariane-5 launches, with the subsequent satellites planned to launch in Ariane-6 when it enters service. In 2006, the first European low-Earth orbit operational meteorological satellite, Metop -A
621-646: A single satellite accurately, approximately 4-6 transmissions are required in succession during a satellite pass. Accuracy can vary between several hundred meters to several kilometers. The Argos 3 system uses a downlink signal at 465.9875 MHz. However, due to ground-based alarm system interference issues in the United States, the downlink was disabled on the NOAA-19 satellite. Other newer satellites still transmit on this frequency. The downlink contains date and time, Argos System satellite ephemeris data, and
690-485: A spatial resolution of 1.1 km, and the two IR-window channels had a thermal resolution of 0.12 Kelvin at 300 Kelvin. The AVHRR was capable of operating in both real-time or recorded modes. Real-time or direct readout data were transmitted to ground stations both at low (4 km) resolution via automatic picture transmission (APT) and at high (1 km) resolution via high-resolution picture transmission (HRPT). Data recorded on board were available for processing in
759-506: A trained analyst to determine cloud heights and types, to calculate land and surface water temperatures, and to locate ocean surface features. Infrared satellite imagery can be used effectively for tropical cyclones with a visible eye pattern, using the Dvorak technique , where the difference between the temperature of the warm eye and the surrounding cold cloud tops can be used to determine its intensity (colder cloud tops generally indicate
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#1732776166135828-462: A valuable asset in such situations. Nighttime photos also show the burn-off in gas and oil fields. Atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles have been taken by weather satellites since 1969. Not all weather satellites are direct imagers . Some satellites are sounders that take measurements of a single pixel at a time. They have no horizontal spatial resolution but often are capable or resolving vertical atmospheric layers . Soundings along
897-577: A velocity accuracy of 1.0 to 1.6 m/s. This system had the capability of acquiring data from up to 4000 platforms per day. Identical experiments were flown on other spacecraft in the TIROS-N/NOAA series. Processing and dissemination of data were handled by CNES in Toulouse , France . The SEM was an extension of the solar proton monitoring experiment flown on the ITOS spacecraft series. The object
966-518: Is classified in accordance with ITU Radio Regulations (article 1) as follows: Fixed service (article 1.20) The allocation of radio frequencies is provided according to Article 5 of the ITU Radio Regulations (edition 2012). In order to improve harmonisation in spectrum utilisation, the majority of service-allocations stipulated in this document were incorporated in national Tables of Frequency Allocations and Utilisations which
1035-446: Is designed to use one of two different classes of orbit: geostationary and polar orbiting . Geostationary weather satellites orbit the Earth above the equator at altitudes of 35,880 km (22,300 miles). Because of this orbit , they remain stationary with respect to the rotating Earth and thus can record or transmit images of the entire hemisphere below continuously with their visible-light and infrared sensors. The news media use
1104-670: Is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be polar orbiting (covering the entire Earth asynchronously), or geostationary (hovering over the same spot on the equator ). While primarily used to detect the development and movement of storm systems and other cloud patterns, meteorological satellites can also detect other phenomena such as city lights, fires, effects of pollution, auroras , sand and dust storms , snow cover, ice mapping, boundaries of ocean currents , and energy flows. Other types of environmental information are collected using weather satellites. Weather satellite images helped in monitoring
1173-584: Is the results from Franco-American cooperation. In addition to satellite data collection , the main feature of the Argos system is its to ability to geographically locate the data source from any location on Earth using the Doppler effect ; which refers to the apparent change in the wavelength due to relative motion between its source and observer. Argos is operated by CLS/Argos, based in Toulouse , France, and its United States subsidiary, CLS America. Argos
1242-411: Is what has given humanity the capability to make accurate and preemptive space weather forecasts since the late 2010s. In Europe, the first Meteosat geostationary operational meteorological satellite, Meteosat-1, was launched in 1977 on a Delta launch vehicle. The satellite was a spin-stabilised cylindrical design, 2.1 m in diameter and 3.2 m tall, rotating at approx. 100 rpm and carrying
1311-420: Is with-in the responsibility of the appropriate national administration. The allocation might be primary, secondary, exclusive, and shared. Argos (satellite system) Argos is a global satellite -based system that collects, processes, and disseminates (spreads, distributes) environmental data from fixed and mobile platforms around the world. The worldwide tracking and environmental monitoring system
1380-550: The COSPAS-SARSAT Search and Rescue (SAR) and ARGOS Data Collection Platform (DCP) missions. SEVIRI provided an increased number of spectral channels over MVIRI and imaged the full-Earth disc at double the rate. Meteosat-9 was launched to complement Meteosat-8 in 2005, with the second pair consisting of Meteosat-10 and Meteosat-11 launched in 2012 and 2015, respectively. The Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) programme launched its first satellite in 2022, and featured
1449-520: The Earth Radiation Budget Satellite and NOAA-10 The Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking ( SARSAT ) instruments had the capability of detecting and locating existing emergency transmitters in a manner independent of the environmental data. Data from the 121.5-MHz Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT), the 243-MHz Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRB), and experimental 406-MHz ELTs/EPIRBs were received by
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#17327761661351518-592: The European Commission 's Copernicus programme and fulfils the Sentinel-4 mission to monitor air quality, trace gases and aerosols over Europe hourly at high spatial resolution. Two MTG satellites - one Imager and one Sounder - will operate in close proximity from the 0-deg geostationary location over western Africa to observe the eastern Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, while
1587-995: The Meteosat Visible and Infrared Imager (MVIRI) instrument. Successive Meteosat first generation satellites were launched, on European Ariane-4 launchers from Kourou in French Guyana, up to and including Meteosat-7 which acquired data from 1997 until 2017, operated initially by the European Space Agency and later by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Japan has launched nine Himawari satellites beginning in 1977. Starting in 1988 China has launched twenty-one Fengyun satellites. The Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites - also spin stabilised although physically larger and twice
1656-462: The U.S. Air Force , and it was capable of maintaining an Earth-pointing accuracy of better than ± 0.1° with a motion rate of less than 0.035 degrees/second. Primary sensors included: The secondary experiment was a Data Collection and Platform Location System (DCPLS). A Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System ( SARSAT ) system was also carried on NOAA-9. A Space Environment Monitor (SEM) measuring proton and electron fluxes. The AVHRR/2
1725-466: The atmosphere of Earth , its surface and cloud cover , and the near-space environment . NOAA-9 was launched on an Atlas E on 12 December 1984 at 10:42:00 UTC from Vandenberg Air Force Base at Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 3 (SLW-3W), California . The NOAA-9 satellite had a mass of 1,420 kg (3,130 lb). The satellite was based upon the DMSP Block 5D satellite bus developed for
1794-532: The solar radiation balance of the tropics. Other dust storms in Asia and mainland China are common and easy to spot and monitor, with recent examples of dust moving across the Pacific Ocean and reaching North America. In remote areas of the world with few local observers, fires could rage out of control for days or even weeks and consume huge areas before authorities are alerted. Weather satellites can be
1863-444: The watersheds of the western United States. This information is gleaned from existing satellites of all agencies of the U.S. government (in addition to local, on-the-ground measurements). Ice floes, packs, and bergs can also be located and tracked from weather spacecraft. Even pollution whether it is nature-made or human-made can be pinpointed. The visual and infrared photos show effects of pollution from their respective areas over
1932-537: The 1962 Defense Satellite Applications Program (DSAP) and the 1964 Soviet Meteor series . TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program , whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the tropospheric column began to be retrieved by satellites from
2001-446: The Earth at a typical altitude of 850 km (530 miles) in a north to south (or vice versa) path, passing over the poles in their continuous flight. Polar orbiting weather satellites are in sun-synchronous orbits , which means they are able to observe any place on Earth and will view every location twice each day with the same general lighting conditions due to the near-constant local solar time . Polar orbiting weather satellites offer
2070-521: The Earth from limb to limb, approximately 135°; two medium FOV sensors viewed a 10° region. The fifth sensor was a solar monitor that measured the total radiation from the Sun . Of the four Earth-viewing sensors, one wide and one medium FOV sensors made total radiation measurements; the other two measured reflected solar radiation in the shortwave spectral band between 0.2 and 5 micrometers by using Suprasil-W filters . The Earth-emitted longwave radiation component
2139-835: The Indian Ocean. The Japanese have the MTSAT -2 located over the mid Pacific at 145°E and the Himawari 8 at 140°E. The Europeans have four in operation, Meteosat -8 (3.5°W) and Meteosat-9 (0°) over the Atlantic Ocean and have Meteosat-6 (63°E) and Meteosat-7 (57.5°E) over the Indian Ocean. China currently has four Fengyun (风云) geostationary satellites (FY-2E at 86.5°E, FY-2F at 123.5°E, FY-2G at 105°E and FY-4A at 104.5 °E) operated. India also operates geostationary satellites called INSAT which carry instruments for meteorological purposes. Polar orbiting weather satellites circle
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2208-788: The MSU sampled 11 FOVs along the swath with the same width. Each SSU scan line had 8 FOVs with a width of 1500 km. This experiment was also flown on other TIROS-N/NOAA series spacecraft. The DCPLS on NOAA-9, also known as Argos , was designed and built in France to meet the meteorological data needs of the United States and to support the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP). The system received low-duty-cycle transmissions of meteorological observations from free-floating balloons, ocean buoys, other satellites, and fixed ground-based sensor platforms distributed around
2277-574: The NOAA central computer facility. They included global area coverage (GAC) data, with a resolution of 4 km, and local area coverage (LAC), that contained data from selected portions of each orbit with a 1-km resolution. Identical experiments were flown on other spacecraft in the TIROS-N/NOAA series. The TOVS consisted of three instruments: the High-resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder modification 2 (HIRS/2),
2346-535: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA , United States). The system utilizes both ground and satellite-based resources to accomplish its mission. These include: Since June 2019, a new subsidiary named Kinéis has taken over operations and plans to launch a constellation of 16U CubeSats in 2022. In June 2024, the first of these Cubesats were launched on a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle named "No Time Toulouse". On 20 September 2024,
2415-792: The Search and Rescue Repeater (SARR) and broadcast in real time on an L-band frequency (1544.5 MHz). Real-time data were monitored by local user terminals operated in the United States , Canada , and France . The 406-MHz data were also processed by the Search and Rescue Processor (SARP) and retransmitted in real time and stored on the spacecraft for later transmittal to the CDA stations in Alaska and Virginia , thus providing full global coverage. The distress signals were forwarded to Mission Control Centers located in each country for subsequent relay to
2484-757: The Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU), and the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU). All three instruments were designed to determine radiances needed to calculate temperature and humidity profiles of the atmosphere from the surface to the stratosphere (approximately 1 mb ). The HIRS/2 instrument had 20 channels in the following spectral intervals: The SSU instrument was provided by the British Meteorological Office ( United Kingdom ). The SSU operated at three 15.0 μm channels using selective absorption, passing
2553-529: The U.S., Europe, India, China, Russia, and Japan provide nearly continuous observations for a global weather watch. As early as 1946, the idea of cameras in orbit to observe the weather was being developed. This was due to sparse data observation coverage and the expense of using cloud cameras on rockets. By 1958, the early prototypes for TIROS and Vanguard (developed by the Army Signal Corps ) were created. The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2 ,
2622-405: The ability to transmit a short 3 to 31 byte message for each transmission. Each platform is restricted to a specified interval, such as every 60 seconds, allowing for a few hundred bytes total per satellite pass. This is enough to contain a couple elements of geographic coordinates or other sensor data. Argos 1 is no longer supported. In order to determine transmitter position using Doppler shift on
2691-577: The appropriate Rescue Coordination Center. The SBUV/2 was designed to map total ozone concentrations on a global scale, and to provide the vertical distribution of ozone in the atmosphere of Earth . The instrument design was based upon the technology developed for the SBUV/TOMS flown on Nimbus 7 . The SBUV/2 instrument measured backscattered solar radiation in an 11.3° field of view in the nadir direction at 12 discrete, 1.1-nm wide, wavelength bands between 252.0 and 339.8 nm. The solar irradiance
2760-591: The best of all weather vehicles with its ability to detect objects almost as 'small' as a huge oil tanker . In addition, of all the weather satellites in orbit, only DMSP can "see" at night in the visual. Some of the most spectacular photos have been recorded by the night visual sensor; city lights, volcanoes , fires, lightning, meteors , oil field burn-offs, as well as the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis have been captured by this 720 kilometres (450 mi) high space vehicle's low moonlight sensor. At
2829-526: The development of statistical relationships between regional weather and radiation budget anomalies. The ERBE consisted of two instrument packages: the Non-Scanner (ERBE-NS) instrument and the Scanner (ERBS-S) instrument. The ERBE-NS instrument had five sensors, each using cavity radiometer detectors. Four of them were primarily Earth-viewing: two wide field of view (FOV) sensors viewed the entire disk of
NOAA-9 - Misplaced Pages Continue
2898-469: The downlink portion of the two-way communication link. Data collected from the Argos System is transmitted to the ground using two possible methods. If an Argos System ground receiving station is in view of the satellite while the transmitter is also in view, the data is transmitted and processed in near real time. If a ground station is not in view or operational, data is additionally transmitted from
2967-578: The eastern Atlantic and most of the Pacific Ocean, which led to significant improvements to weather forecasts . The ESSA and NOAA polar orbiting satellites followed suit from the late 1960s onward. Geostationary satellites followed, beginning with the ATS and SMS series in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then continuing with the GOES series from the 1970s onward. Polar orbiting satellites such as QuikScat and TRMM began to relay wind information near
3036-705: The entire earth. Aircraft and rocket pollution, as well as condensation trails , can also be spotted. The ocean current and low level wind information gleaned from the space photos can help predict oceanic oil spill coverage and movement. Almost every summer, sand and dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa drifts across the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean. GOES-EAST photos enable meteorologists to observe, track and forecast this sand cloud. In addition to reducing visibilities and causing respiratory problems, sand clouds suppress hurricane formation by modifying
3105-505: The geostationary photos in their daily weather presentation as single images or made into movie loops. These are also available on the city forecast pages of www.noaa.gov (example Dallas, TX). Several geostationary meteorological spacecraft are in operation. The United States' GOES series has three in operation: GOES-15 , GOES-16 and GOES-17 . GOES-16 and-17 remain stationary over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, respectively. GOES-15
3174-469: The globe. These observations were organized on board the spacecraft and retransmitted when the spacecraft came within range of a Command and Data Acquisition (CDA) station. For free-moving balloons, the Doppler frequency shift of the transmitted signal was observed to calculate the location of the balloons. The DCPLS was expected, for a moving sensor platform, to have a location accuracy of 3 to 5 km, and
3243-488: The incoming radiation through three pressure-modulated cells containing CO 2 . The MSU had one channel in the 50.31-GHz window region and three channels in the 55 GHz oxygen band (53.73, 54.96, and 57.95 GHz) to obtain temperature profiles which were free of cloud interference. The HIRS/2 had a field of view (FOV) 30 km in diameter at nadir , whereas the MSU had a FOV of 110 km in diameter. The HIRS/2 sampled 56 FOVs in each scan line about 2250 km wide, and
3312-547: The late 1980s, Argos transmitters have been deployed on a large number of marine mammals and sea turtles, and it is used for tracking long-distance movements of both coastal and oceanic species. Argos was developed under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Centre National d'Études Spatiales ( CNES , France ), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA , United States ) and
3381-666: The mass of the first generation - were developed by ESA with European industry and in cooperation with EUMETSAT who then operate the satellites from their headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany with this same approach followed for all subsequent European meteorological satellites. Meteosat-8 , the first MSG satellite, was launched in 2002 on an Ariane-5 launcher, carrying the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) and Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instruments, along with payloads to support
3450-510: The most dramatic photos showed the 600 Kuwaiti oil fires that the fleeing Army of Iraq started on February 23, 1991. The night photos showed huge flashes, far outstripping the glow of large populated areas. The fires consumed huge quantities of oil; the last was doused on November 6, 1991. Snowfield monitoring, especially in the Sierra Nevada , can be helpful to the hydrologist keeping track of available snowpack for runoff vital to
3519-484: The ocean's surface starting in the late 1970s, with microwave imagery which resembled radar displays, which significantly improved the diagnoses of tropical cyclone strength, intensification, and location during the 2000s and 2010s. The DSCOVR satellite, owned by NOAA, was launched in 2015 and became the first deep space satellite that can observe and predict space weather. It can detect potentially dangerous weather such as solar wind and geomagnetic storms . This
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#17327761661353588-547: The operational configuration. The imager satellites carry the Flexible Combined Imager (FCI), succeeding MVIRI and SEVIRI to give even greater resolution and spectral coverage, scanning the full Earth disc every ten minutes, as well as a new Lightning Imager (LI) payload. The sounder satellites carry the Infrared Sounder (IRS) and Ultra-violet Visible Near-infrared (UVN) instruments. UVN is part of
3657-424: The same time, energy use and city growth can be monitored since both major and even minor cities, as well as highway lights, are conspicuous. This informs astronomers of light pollution . The New York City Blackout of 1977 was captured by one of the night orbiter DMSP space vehicles. In addition to monitoring city lights, these photos are a life saving asset in the detection and monitoring of fires. Not only do
3726-606: The satellite ground track can still be gridded later to form maps . According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a meteorological-satellite service (also: meteorological-satellite radiocommunication service ) is – according to Article 1.52 of the ITU Radio Regulations (RR) – defined as « An earth exploration-satellite service for meteorological purposes.» This radiocommunication service
3795-446: The satellite to one of several polar based ground stations. This introduces additional delay in receiving messages. The Argos System is served by 9 polar orbiting satellites at an altitude of 850 km and completes a revolution around Earth approximately every 100 minutes. At a vantage point of 850 km, satellites cover approximately 5000 km of Earth. Each satellite was intended to be Sun-synchronous , with passes almost at
3864-429: The satellites see the fires visually day and night, but the thermal and infrared scanners on board these weather satellites detect potential fire sources below the surface of the Earth where smoldering occurs. Once the fire is detected, the same weather satellites provide vital information about wind that could fan or spread the fires. These same cloud photos from space tell the firefighter when it will rain. Some of
3933-421: The second batch of five Cubesats were launched on electron launch number 53 named "Kinéis Killed The RadIoT Star", see List of Electron launches . The Argos satellite-based system was set up by: Recent partners in this international cooperative venture are: Most use of the Argos System makes use of one-way data transmission on 401.65 MHz using Argos 2. Each Argos platform features a unique 28-bit ID and
4002-785: The single first generation satellites to continue the EPS mission. Observation is typically made via different 'channels' of the electromagnetic spectrum , in particular, the visible and infrared portions. Some of these channels include: Visible-light images from weather satellites during local daylight hours are easy to interpret even by the average person, clouds, cloud systems such as fronts and tropical storms, lakes, forests, mountains, snow ice, fires, and pollution such as smoke, smog, dust and haze are readily apparent. Even wind can be determined by cloud patterns, alignments and movement from successive photos. The thermal or infrared images recorded by sensors called scanning radiometers enable
4071-517: The surface of Earth brightness at 380 nm. The CCR field of view was 11.3°. Over the years, inevitable failures took their toll. HIRS long-wave channels became noisy, significantly degrading soundings beginning in late 1984. The ERBE scanner instrument malfunctioned on 20 January 1987 and the MSU lost one of three channels in February and another in May of the same year. The ERBE nonscanner instrument
4140-399: The volcanic ash cloud from Mount St. Helens and activity from other volcanoes such as Mount Etna . Smoke from fires in the western United States such as Colorado and Utah have also been monitored. El Niño and its effects on weather are monitored daily from satellite images. The Antarctic ozone hole is mapped from weather satellite data. Collectively, weather satellites flown by
4209-636: Was a four-channel scanning radiometer capable of providing global daytime and nighttime sea-surface temperature and information about ice, snow, and clouds. These data were obtained on a daily basis for use in weather analysis and forecasting. The multispectral radiometer operated in the scanning mode and measured emitted and reflected radiation in the following spectral intervals: channel 1 ( visible ), 0.55 to 0.90 micrometer (μm); channel 2 ( near infrared ), 0.725 μm to detector cutoff around 1.1 μm; channel 3 (IR window), 3.55 to 3.93 μm; and channel 4 (IR window), 10.5 to 11.5 μm. All four channels had
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#17327761661354278-499: Was determined at the same 12 wavelength bands by deploying a diffuser which reflected sunlight into the instrument's field of view. The SBUV/2 also measured the solar irradiance or the atmospheric radiance with a continuous spectral scan from 160 to 400 nm in increments of 0.148 nm. The SBUV/2 had another narrowband filter photometer channel, called the Cloud Cover Radiometer (CCR), which continuously measured
4347-521: Was determined by subtracting the shortwave measurement from the total measurement. The ERBE-S instrument was a scanning radiometer which contained three narrow FOV channels. One channel measured reflected solar radiation in the shortwave spectral interval between 0.2 and 5 micrometers (μm). Another channel measured Earth-emitted radiation in the longwave spectral region from 5 to 50 μm. The third channel measured total radiation with wavelength between 0.2 and 50 μm. All three channels were located within
4416-504: Was established in 1978 and has provided data to environmental research and protection groups. It is a component of many global research programs including the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere program (TOGA), Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP), World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and, Argo . There are 22,000 active transmitters (8,000 of which are used in animal tracking) in over 100 countries. Since
4485-595: Was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit at 817 km altitude by a Soyuz launcher from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. This operational satellite - which forms the space segment of the EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) - built on the heritage from ESA's ERS and Envisat experimental missions, and was followed at six-year intervals by Metop-B and Metop-C - the latter launched from French Guyana in a "Europeanised" Soyuz . Each carry thirteen different passive and active instruments ranging in design from imagers and sounders to
4554-550: Was launched on February 17, 1959. It was designed to measure cloud cover and resistance, but a poor axis of rotation and its elliptical orbit kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data. The Explorer 6 and Explorer 7 satellites also contained weather-related experiments. The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1 , launched by NASA on April 1, 1960. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. Other early weather satellite programs include
4623-429: Was powered off on 3 April 1997. Receipt of both telemetry and ephemeris data was discontinued. The last contact occurred on 13 February 1998. In late 1999, a transmitter on 137.5 MHz started working again, sending an unmodulated carrier. It seems to transmit while the satellite is in sunlight . Weather satellite A weather satellite or meteorological satellite is a type of Earth observation satellite that
4692-467: Was retired in early July 2019. The satellite GOES 13 that was previously owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) was transferred to the U.S. Space Force in 2019 and renamed the EWS-G1; becoming the first geostationary weather satellite to be owned and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense. Russia 's new-generation weather satellite Elektro-L No.1 operates at 76°E over
4761-510: Was to measure proton flux, electron flux density, and energy spectrum in the upper atmosphere . The experiment package consisted of three detector systems and a data processing unit. The Medium Energy Proton and Electron Detector (MEPED) measured protons in five energy ranges from 30 keV to >2.5 MeV; electrons above 30, 100, and 300 keV; protons and electrons (inseparable) above 6 MeV; and omni-directional protons above 16, 36, and 80 MeV. The High-Energy Proton Alpha Telescope (HEPAT), which had
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