Currently Supported Satelites

24 Jan 2006

Japan launched ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) in January 2006, aboard an H2-A rocket. The 4000-kilogram satellite, renamed Daichi, was placed in a near-polar orbit. ALOS remote-sensing equipment enables precise land coverage observation and can collect enough data by itself for mapping on a scale of 25,000:1, without relying on points of reference on the ground. Some of its objectives are cartography, disaster monitoring, natural resource surveys and technology development.

ERS-2 (European Remote Sensing) is a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite for remote sensing from a polar orbit. The 2500 kilogram satellite provides global and repetitive observations of the environment using techniques which allow imaging in all  weather conditions. The ERS-2 satellite is essentially the same as ERS-1 except that it includes a number of enhancements and it is carrying a new payload instrument to measure the chemical composition of the atmosphere, named the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME). SAR data from ERS-2 is available from the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) for the regions of the world covered by the ASF station mask and the McMurdo station mask.

NASA launched the Fast Auroral Snapshot (FAST) satellite as part of the Small Explorers (SMEX) Program. The 190 kilogram satellite was launched in August, 1996 by a winged Pegasus XL rocket released from an L-1011 jet aircraft at an altitude of about 12,200 meters(40,000 feet) traveling at Mach 0.8. The FAST satellite was inserted into a polar orbit with an altitude range of 350 to 4200 km (220 to 2,600 miles) above Earth. FAST carries instruments to measure energetic electrons and ions, electric fields, and magnetic fields above the Earth's auroral zones.

NASA launched QuickSCAT (Quick Scatterometer) in 1999 as a “quick recovery” mission to replace the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) lost aboard Japan’s ADEOS-1 satellite in 1997. The 190 kilogram satellite was inserted into a sun-synchronous, near-polar orbit by a Titan II rocket. It carries a specialized microwave radar that measures near-surface wind speed and direction over Earth’s oceans day or night, regardless of weather. QuickSCAT’s objectives include improving weather forecasts and storm warnings, and studying vegetation and ice pack changes. QuickSCAT data is available from the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO DAAC) maintained by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) launched SciSAT aboard an Orbital Space Corp. winged Pegasus rocket launched from an L-1011 jet in August 2003. The 150 kilogram satellite is intended to study a range of atmospheric processes. The main goal of ACE is to study the atmospheric chemistry and dynamics that affect stratospheric ozone depletion, but ACE measurements are also being used to study ozone depletion in the Antarctic, the atmospheric effects of biomass burning, the effects of aerosols and clouds on the global energy balance, and other areas of atmospheric science.