Marc Bergadà, Patricia Brotons, Yolanda Camacho, Leila Díez, Ataúlfo Gamonal, J. Luis García, Raquel González, Alberto Pacheco, M. Ángel Palacios, Ulf Klein
The Sentinel-3 (S-3) Microwave Radiometer (MWR) is being developed by EADS CASA Espacio (ECE) under contract
with Thales Alenia Space France (TAS-F) and the European Space Agency (ESA). This instrument, along with a radar
altimeter and a precise orbit determination package, is part of a topographic mission in the frame of the Global
Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. The MWR will determine the amount of humidity in the
atmosphere in order to correct for the wet tropospheric path delay of the altimeter data by means of brightness
temperature measurements at 23.8 GHz and 36.5 GHz. This paper describes the design and development plan for the
MWR instrument.
In order to meet Earth observation needs of the European Union-ESA Global Monitoring for
Environment and Security (GMES) programme, ESA decided to develop the Sentinels as first series of operational
satellites. The series of Sentinel-3 satellites will provide global, frequent and near-realtime ocean, ice and land
monitoring. It continues Envisat's altimetry, the multispectral, medium-resolution visible and infrared ocean and landsurface
observations of ERS, Envisat and Spot, and includes enhancements to meet the operational revisit requirements
and to facilitate new products and evolution of services. The first launch is expected in 2013. In this paper the design of
the major instruments and their basic performance parameters will be introduced as well as the expected accuracies of
the main data products.
MARSCHALS is the airborne simulator of a proposed future satellite instrument to measure millimetre-wave limb emission from O3, H2O, CO and other trace gases in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
To achieve comparatively high vertical resolution and pointing stability, MARSCHALS scans the atmospheric limb in 1km vertical steps using a 235mm diameter antenna controlled by a dedicated inertial measurement unit. A quasi-optical network directs radiation from the antenna or an ambient (~300K) or cold (~90K) calibration target into three front-end receivers and suppresses each unwanted side-band by >30dB using multi-layer frequency selective surfaces. Each receiver comprises a waveguide mixer pumped subharmonically by a phase-locked LO and a wideband IF preamplifier. The IF outputs are directed to channeliser spectrometers of 200MHz resolution which instantaneously and contiguously cover 12GHz wide (RF) frequency bands centred near 300, 325 and 345GHz. To identify clouds, images of near-IR sunlight scattered into the limb direction are recorded concurrently by an 850nm wavelength camera.
MARSCHALS has been built under ESA contract by a consortium led by Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, and had its first flights on the Russian Geophysica (M55) aircraft during 2005, culminating in a deployment during the SCOUT-O3 campaign based in Darwin, Australia. This paper describes the MARSCHALS instrument and an initial assessment of its performance, determined on ground and during flight.
Six candidate Earth Explorer (satellite) missions were undergoing phase A industrial studies and science consolidation from 2002 to early 2004. They included 3 'Core' missions (EarthCARE, SPECTRA and WALES) and 3 'Opportunity' missions (ACE+, EGPM, SWARM). Three of the candidate missions carry microwave payloads for atmospheric sensing. In April 2004, a selection workshop was held, and recommendations for implementation (phases B, C, D) were made by the Earth Sciences Advisory Committee (ESAC) and an implementation decision was taken by the Programme Board on Earth Observation (PB-EO) in May. SWARM, a magnetometry mission, was selected for full implementation as a 5th Explorer mission. The decision for the 6th Explorer mission was postponed to Nov. 2004 between EarthCARE and SPECTRA candidates, pending on the confirmation by JAXA on its contribution to EarthCARE and a re-examination by ESA. EGPM was recommended for implementation under the GMES, a new ESA programme of operational missions. In this paper, EarthCARE and EGPM are described with a particular emphasis on the microwave payloads.
The European Space Agency has undertaken exploratory studies to define future space borne microwave instruments for application in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate research in the 2015 to 2020 time frame. Teams involving scientist and industrial partners were following an approach that in a first stage reviewed and defined the user requirements for both applications. NWP requires mainly existing observables at an improved spatial and temporal resolution, and in addition operational observation of ice clouds. Climate user requirements are quite similar but do not call for the same temporal resolution and additionally observations of cirrus and surface parameters are needed. The user requirements were translated into system requirements that, at this point appear challenging but in most cases feasible in the envisaged time frame. The industrial teams traded the user requirements, system requirements and implementation issues. The derived mission and instrument concepts include improved cross-track sounders with AMSU heritage as well as conical scanning instruments (partly including sounding capabilities) on polar orbiting platforms.
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