1.
Athens
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Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime. In 2015, Athens was ranked the worlds 29th richest city by purchasing power, Athens is recognised as a global city because of its location and its importance in shipping, finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, culture, education and tourism. It is one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe, with a financial sector. The municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its limits. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative city limits. According to Eurostat in 2011, the Functional urban areas of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland. The city also retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery, Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural, in earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη. It was possibly rendered in the later on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι. During the medieval period the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα, an etiological myth explaining how Athens has acquired its name was well known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. The goddess of wisdom, Athena, and the god of the seas, Poseidon had many disagreements, in an attempt to compel the people, Poseidon created a salt water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. However, when Athena created the tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning flower, ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindars ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines, Satine, and Astines, today the caption η πρωτεύουσα, the capital, has become somewhat common
2.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
3.
Earth observation satellite
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Most Earth observation satellites carry instruments that should be operated at a relatively low altitude. Altitudes below 500-600 kilometers are in general avoided, though, because of the significant air-drag at such low altitudes making frequent orbit reboost maneuvres necessary. The Earth observation satellites ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat of European Space Agency as well as the MetOp spacecraft of EUMETSAT are all operated at altitudes of about 800 km. The Proba-1, Proba-2 and SMOS spacecraft of European Space Agency are observing the Earth from an altitude of about 700 km, the Earth observation satellites of UAE, DubaiSat-1 & DubaiSat-2 are also placed in Low Earth Orbits orbits and providing satellite imagery of various parts of the Earth. To get global coverage with a low orbit it must be a polar orbit or nearly so, spacecraft carrying instruments for which an altitude of 36000 km is suitable sometimes use a geostationary orbit. Such an orbit allows uninterrupted coverage of more than 1/3 of the Earth, three geostationary spacecraft at longitudes separated with 120 deg can cover the whole Earth except the extreme polar regions. This type of orbit is used for meteorological satellites. A weather satellite is a type of satellite that is used to monitor the weather. These meteorological satellites, however, see more than clouds and cloud systems, weather satellite images helped in monitoring the volcanic ash cloud from Mount St. Helens and activity from other volcanoes such as Mount Etna. By monitoring vegetation changes over time, droughts can be monitored by comparing the current vegetation state to its long term average, anthropogenic emissions can be monitored by evaluating data of tropospheric NO2 and SO2. These types of satellites are almost always in Sun synchronous and frozen orbits, the Sun synchronous orbit is in general sufficiently close to polar to get the desired global coverage while the relatively constant geometry to the Sun mostly is an advantage for the instruments. The frozen orbit is selected as this is the closest to an orbit that is possible in the gravitational field of the Earth. Terrain can be mapped from space with the use of satellites, such as Radarsat-1 and TerraSAR-X. campevans. org/_CE/html/tiros1-2. html
4.
Spot Image
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Spot Image, a public limited company created in 1982 by the French Space Agency, Centre National dEtudes Spatiales, the IGN, and Space Manufacturers is a subsidiary of EADS Astrium. The company is the operator for the SPOT Earth observation satellites. Spot Image is a distributor of products and services using imagery from Earth observation satellites and works through a network of subsidiaries, local offices. The goal is to provide service with worldwide availability. Spot Image works with a network of more than 30 direct receiving stations handling images acquired by the SPOT satellites, the 3 SPOT satellites in orbit provide images with a large choice of resolutions – from 2.5 m to 10 m. Spot Image also distributes multiresolution data from other satellites, in particular from Formosat-2 and Kompsat-2, for which it has exclusive distribution rights. Spot Image is also the distributor of data from the very-high resolution Pleiades satellites. The launch of Pléiades-1, via a Soyuz rocket, was confirmed on December 16,2011, spot Image also offers infrastructures for receiving and processing, as well as added value options. The SPOT archives, more than 18 million images of the world, collected by SPOT satellites since 1986, are archived and accessible on line. Its goal is to encourage the Earth observation industry and geographic information professionals to support local projects searching for solutions to climate change problems
5.
Toulouse
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Toulouse is the capital city of the southwestern French department of Haute-Garonne, as well as of the Occitanie region. The city lies on the banks of the River Garonne,150 kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea,230 km from the Atlantic Ocean and it is the fourth-largest city in France with 466,297 inhabitants in January 2014. The Toulouse Metro area is, with 1312304 inhabitants as of 2014, Frances 4th metropolitan area after Paris, Lyon and Marseille and ahead of Lille and Bordeaux. Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, the Airbus Group, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. The city also hosts the European headquarters of Intel and CNESs Toulouse Space Centre, thales Alenia Space, and Astrium Satellites, Airbus Groups satellite system subsidiary, also have a significant presence in Toulouse. The University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe and, with more than 103,000 students, is the fourth-largest university campus in France, after the Universities of Paris, Lyon and Lille. The air route between Toulouse Blagnac and Paris Orly is the busiest in Europe, transporting 2.4 million passengers in 2014, according to the rankings of LExpress and Challenges, Toulouse is the most dynamic French city. It is now the capital of the Occitanie region, the largest region in metropolitan France, sernin, the largest remaining Romanesque building in Europe, designated in 1998 because of its significance to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. Toulouse is in the south of France, north of the department of Haute-Garonne, the city is traversed by the Canal de Brienne, the Canal du Midi and the rivers Garonne, Touch and Hers-Mort. Toulouse has a subtropical climate which can be qualified as submediterranean due to its proximity to the Mediterranean climate zone. The Garonne Valley was a point for trade between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic since at least the Iron Age. The historical name of the city, Tolosa, it is of unknown meaning or origin, possibly from Aquitanian, or from Iberian, Tolosa enters the historical period in the 2nd century BC, when it became a Roman military outpost. After the conquest of Gaul, it was developed as a Roman city of Gallia Narbonensis. In the 5th century, Tolosa fell to the Visigothic kingdom and became one of its cities, in the early 6th century even serving as its capital. From this time, Toulouse was the capital of Aquitaine within the Frankish realm, in 721, Duke Odo of Aquitaine defeated an invading Umayyad Muslim army at the Battle of Toulouse. Odos victory was an obstacle to Muslim expansion into Christian Europe. Charles Martel, a later, won the Battle of Tours. The Frankish conquest of Septimania followed in the 750s, and a quasi-independent County of Toulouse emerged within the Carolingian sub-kingdom of Aquitaine by the late 8th century
6.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
7.
CNES
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The Centre national détudes spatiales is the French government space agency. Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is under the supervision of the French Ministries of Defence and it operates from the Toulouse Space Center and Guiana Space Centre, but also has payloads launched from space centres operated by other countries. The president of CNES is Jean-Yves Le Gall, CNES is member of Institute of Space, its Applications and Technologies. CNES benefits from the second largest national budget allocated to space, CNES was established under President Charles de Gaulle in 1961. CNES was responsible for the training of French astronauts, until the last active CNES astronauts transferred to the European Space Agency in 2001. As of January 2015, CNES is working with Germany and a few governments to start a modest research effort with the hope to propose a LOX/methane reusable launch vehicle by mid-2015. If built, flight testing would not start before approximately 2026. Hammaguir missile range built in Algeria,1963 Cats launched into space via Véronique rockets. 1965 First French satellite put in orbit,1969 French Guiana Space Centre completed. Commercial competition in space is fierce, so launch services must be tailored to space operators’ needs, the new versions of Ariane 5 can launch large satellites or perform dual launches while the Vega and Soyuz-2 are small and medium-lift launchers. CNES is taking part in the Galileo navigation programme alongside the European Union, in addition to Spot and the future Pleiades satellites, CNES is working for the defence community as prime contractor for the Helios satellites. France’s contribution to the International Space Station is giving French scientists the opportunity to perform experiments in microgravity. The CNES is studying formation flying, a technique whereby several satellites fly components of a much heavier, CNES is collaborating with other space agencies in a number of projects. Joint missions with NASA result in PARASOL and CALIPSO satellites, CNES plays a major role in the construction and operation of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite. In December 2006, CNES announced that it would publish its UFO archive online by late January or mid-February, most of the 6,000 reports have been filed by the public and airline professionals. Jacques Arnould, an official for the French Space Agency, said that the data had accumulated over a 30-year period and that they were often reported to the Gendarmerie. In the last two decades of the 20th century, France was the country whose government paid UFO investigators, employed by CNESs UFO section GEPAN, later known as SEPRA. On March 22,2007, CNES released its UFO files to the public through its website, the CNES has several tracking stations
8.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
9.
European Space Agency
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The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states, dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, France, ESA has a staff of about 2,000. The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching, after World War II, many European scientists left Western Europe in order to work with the United States. The meeting was attended by representatives from eight countries, including Harrie Massey. The Western European nations decided to have two different agencies, one concerned with developing a system, ELDO, and the precursor of the European Space Agency. The latter was established on 20 March 1964 by an agreement signed on 14 June 1962, from 1968 to 1972, ESRO launched seven research satellites. ESA in its current form was founded with the ESA Convention in 1975, ESA has 10 founding member states, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. These signed the ESA Convention in 1975 and deposited the instruments of ratification by 1980, during this interval the agency functioned in a de facto fashion. ESA launched its first major scientific mission in 1975, Cos-B, ESA joined NASA in the IUE, the worlds first high-orbit telescope, which was launched in 1978 and operated very successfully for 18 years. A number of successful Earth-orbit projects followed, and in 1986 ESA began Giotto, its first deep-space mission, to study the comets Halley and Grigg–Skjellerup. Hipparcos, a mission, was launched in 1989 and in the 1990s SOHO, Ulysses. Recent scientific missions in co-operation with NASA include the Cassini–Huygens space probe, as the successor of ELDO, ESA has also constructed rockets for scientific and commercial payloads. Ariane 1, launched in 1979, brought mostly commercial payloads into orbit from 1984 onward, the successor launch vehicle of Ariane 5, the Ariane 6 is already in the definition stage and is envisioned to enter service in the 2020s. The beginning of the new millennium saw ESA become, along with agencies like NASA, JAXA, ISRO, CSA and Roscosmos, one of the major participants in scientific space research. Although ESA had relied on co-operation with NASA in previous decades, especially the 1990s, changed circumstances led to decisions to rely more on itself, a 2011 press issue thus stated, Russia is ESAs first partner in its efforts to ensure long-term access to space. ESA maintains its scientific and research projects mainly for astronomy-space missions such as Corot, launched on 27 December 2006 and this is the reason space exploration is an integral part of overall space activities. It has always been so, and it will be more important in the future. ESA describes its work in two overlapping ways, For the general public the various fields of work are described as Activities, Member states participate to varying degrees in the mandatory and optional space programmes
10.
Indian Space Research Organisation
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The Indian Space Research Organisation is the space agency of the Government of India headquartered in the city of Bengaluru. Its vision is to space technology for national development, while pursuing space science research. The establishment of ISRO thus institutionalised space activities in India and it is managed by the Department of Space, which reports to the Prime Minister of The Republic of India. ISRO built Indias first satellite, Aryabhata, which was launched by the Soviet Union on 19 April 1975 and it was named after the Mathematician Aryabhata. In 1980, Rohini became the first satellite to be placed in orbit by an Indian-made launch vehicle and these rockets have launched numerous communications satellites and earth observation satellites. Satellite navigation systems like GAGAN and IRNSS have been deployed, in January 2014, ISRO successfully used an indigenous cryogenic engine in a GSLV-D5 launch of the GSAT-14. On 18 June 2016 ISRO successfully set a record with a launch of 20 satellites in a single payload, on 15 February 2017, ISRO launched 104 satellites in a single rocket and created a world record. Raman and Meghnad Saha contributed to scientific principles applicable in space sciences, however, it was the period after 1945 which saw important developments being made in coordinated space research in India. Studies were carried out at research laboratories, universities, and independent locations, in 1950, the Department of Atomic Energy was founded with Homi Bhabha as its secretary. The Department provided funding for research throughout India. During this time, tests continued on aspects of meteorology and the Earths magnetic field, in 1954, the Uttar Pradesh state observatory was established at the foothills of the Himalayas. The Rangpur Observatory was set up in 1957 at Osmania University, Space research was further encouraged by the technically inclined Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik and opened up possibilities for the rest of the world to conduct a space launch, the Indian National Committee for Space Research was set up in 1962 by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister. The prime objective of ISRO is to space technology and its application to various national tasks. The Indian space programme was driven by the vision of Vikram Sarabhai, in 2008 India launched as many as 11 satellites, including nine from other countries and went on to become the first nation to launch 10 satellites on one rocket. ISRO has successfully put into two major satellite systems, Indian National Satellites for communication services and Indian Remote Sensing satellites for management of natural resources. In July 2012, the former President, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam said that research was being done by ISRO, ISRO is managed by the Department of Space of the Government of India. Development and Educational Communication Unit, Ahmedabad, ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network, Bangalore
11.
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle
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The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, commonly known by its abbreviation PSLV, is an expendable launch system developed and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation. It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits, PSLV can also launch small size satellites into geostationary transfer orbit. In 2015 India successfully launched 17 foreign satellites belonging to Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, some notable payloads launched by PSLV include Indias first lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, Indias first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan and Indias first space observatory, Astrosat. PSLV was designed and developed in the early 1990s at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre near Thiruvananthapuram, the inertial systems are developed by ISRO Inertial Systems Unit at Thiruvananthapuram. The solid propellant motors are processed at Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, the PSLV was first launched on 20 September 1993. The first and second stages performed as expected, but an attitude control problem led to the collision of the second and third stages at separation, after this initial setback, the PSLV successfully completed its second mission in 1994. The fourth launch of PSLV suffered a failure in 1997. Since then, the PSLV has launched 34 times with no further failures, PSLV continues to support Indian and foreign satellite launches especially for low Earth orbit satellites. It has undergone improvements with each subsequent version, especially those involving thrust. In November 2013, it was used to launch the Mars Orbiter Mission, the PSLV has four stages using solid and liquid propulsion systems alternately. The 2. 8-m diameter motor case is made of maraging steel and has an empty mass of 30,200 kg, the solution is stored in two cylindrical aluminium tanks strapped to the solid rocket motor and pressurised with nitrogen. Roll control is provided by two small engines on opposite sides of the stage, the Roll Control Thrusters. On the PSLV and PSLV-XL, first stage thrust is augmented by six strap-on solid boosters, four boosters are ground-lit and the remaining two ignite 25 seconds after launch. In the standard PSLV, each booster carries nine tonnes of propellant, the PSLV-XL uses larger boosters which carry 12 tonnes of propellant and produce 719 kN thrust. Two strap-on boosters are equipped with SITVC for additional attitude control, the PSLV-CA uses no strap-on boosters. The second stage employs the Vikas engine and carries 41.5 tonnes of liquid propellant – unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as fuel and it generates a maximum thrust of 800 kN. The engine is hydraulically gimbaled to provide pitch and yaw control, the third stage uses 7 tonnes of HTPB-based solid propellant and produces a maximum thrust of 240 kN. It has a Kevlar-polyamide fibre case and a submerged nozzle equipped with a flex-bearing-seal gimbaled nozzle thrust-vector engine for pitch & yaw control, Roll control is provided by the fourth stage reaction control system
12.
SPOT (satellite)
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The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, commonly known by its abbreviation PSLV, is an expendable launch system developed and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation. It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits, PSLV can also launch small size satellites into geostationary transfer orbit. In 2015 India successfully launched 17 foreign satellites belonging to Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, some notable payloads launched by PSLV include Indias first lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, Indias first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan and Indias first space observatory, Astrosat. PSLV was designed and developed in the early 1990s at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre near Thiruvananthapuram, the inertial systems are developed by ISRO Inertial Systems Unit at Thiruvananthapuram. The solid propellant motors are processed at Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, the PSLV was first launched on 20 September 1993. The first and second stages performed as expected, but an attitude control problem led to the collision of the second and third stages at separation, after this initial setback, the PSLV successfully completed its second mission in 1994. The fourth launch of PSLV suffered a failure in 1997. Since then, the PSLV has launched 34 times with no further failures, PSLV continues to support Indian and foreign satellite launches especially for low Earth orbit satellites. It has undergone improvements with each subsequent version, especially those involving thrust. In November 2013, it was used to launch the Mars Orbiter Mission, the PSLV has four stages using solid and liquid propulsion systems alternately. The 2. 8-m diameter motor case is made of maraging steel and has an empty mass of 30,200 kg, the solution is stored in two cylindrical aluminium tanks strapped to the solid rocket motor and pressurised with nitrogen. Roll control is provided by two small engines on opposite sides of the stage, the Roll Control Thrusters. On the PSLV and PSLV-XL, first stage thrust is augmented by six strap-on solid boosters, four boosters are ground-lit and the remaining two ignite 25 seconds after launch. In the standard PSLV, each booster carries nine tonnes of propellant, the PSLV-XL uses larger boosters which carry 12 tonnes of propellant and produce 719 kN thrust. Two strap-on boosters are equipped with SITVC for additional attitude control, the PSLV-CA uses no strap-on boosters. The second stage employs the Vikas engine and carries 41.5 tonnes of liquid propellant – unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as fuel and it generates a maximum thrust of 800 kN. The engine is hydraulically gimbaled to provide pitch and yaw control, the third stage uses 7 tonnes of HTPB-based solid propellant and produces a maximum thrust of 240 kN. It has a Kevlar-polyamide fibre case and a submerged nozzle equipped with a flex-bearing-seal gimbaled nozzle thrust-vector engine for pitch & yaw control, Roll control is provided by the fourth stage reaction control system
13.
Polar orbit
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A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited on each revolution. It therefore has an inclination of 90 degrees to the equator, a satellite in a polar orbit will pass over the equator at a different longitude on each of its orbits. Polar orbits are used for earth-mapping, earth observation, capturing the earth as time passes from one point, reconnaissance satellites. The Iridium satellite constellation also uses a polar orbit to provide telecommunications services, the disadvantage to this orbit is that no one spot on the Earths surface can be sensed continuously from a satellite in a polar orbit. Near-polar orbiting satellites commonly choose a Sun-synchronous orbit, meaning each successive orbital pass occurs at the same local time of day. To keep the local time on a given pass, the time period of the orbit must be kept as short as possible. However, very low orbits of a few hundred kilometers rapidly decay due to drag from the atmosphere, commonly used altitudes are between 700 km and 800 km, producing an orbital period of about 100 minutes. The half-orbit on the Sun side then takes only 50 minutes, list of orbits Molniya orbit Vandenberg Air Force Base, a major United States launch location for polar orbits Orbital Mechanics
14.
Circular orbit
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A circular orbit is the orbit at a fixed distance around any point by an object rotating around a fixed axis. Below we consider a circular orbit in astrodynamics or celestial mechanics under standard assumptions, here the centripetal force is the gravitational force, and the axis mentioned above is the line through the center of the central mass perpendicular to the plane of motion. In this case, not only the distance, but also the speed, angular speed, potential, there is no periapsis or apoapsis. This orbit has no radial version, transverse acceleration causes change in direction. If it is constant in magnitude and changing in direction with the velocity, we get a circular motion. For this centripetal acceleration we have a = v 2 r = ω2 r where, v is velocity of orbiting body. The formula is dimensionless, describing a ratio true for all units of measure applied uniformly across the formula. If the numerical value of a is measured in meters per second per second, then the values for v will be in meters per second, r in meters. μ = G M is the standard gravitational parameter, the orbit equation in polar coordinates, which in general gives r in terms of θ, reduces to, r = h 2 μ where, h = r v is specific angular momentum of the orbiting body. Maneuvering into a circular orbit, e. g. It is also a matter of maneuvering into the orbit, for the sake of convenience, the derivation will be written in units in which c = G =1. The four-velocity of a body on an orbit is given by. The dot above a variable denotes derivation with respect to proper time τ
15.
Sun-synchronous orbit
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A Sun-synchronous orbit is a geocentric orbit that combines altitude and inclination in such a way that the satellite passes over any given point of the planets surface at the same local solar time. Such an orbit can place a satellite in constant sunlight and is useful for imaging, spy, more technically, it is an orbit arranged in such a way that it precesses once a year. The surface illumination angle will be nearly the same time that the satellite is overhead. This consistent lighting is a characteristic for satellites that image the Earths surface in visible or infrared wavelengths. For example, a satellite in sun-synchronous orbit might ascend across the twelve times a day each time at approximately 15,00 mean local time. This is achieved by having the orbital plane precess approximately one degree each day with respect to the celestial sphere, eastward. Typical sun-synchronous orbits are about 600–800 km in altitude, with periods in the 96–100 minute range, riding the terminator is useful for active radar satellites as the satellites solar panels can always see the Sun, without being shadowed by the Earth. The dawn/dusk orbit has been used for solar observing scientific satellites such as Yohkoh, TRACE, Hinode and PROBA2, Sun-synchronous orbits can happen around other oblate planets, such as Mars. A satellite around the almost spherical Venus, for example, will need an outside push to be in a sun-synchronous orbit.696 deg. Note that according to this approximation cos i equals −1 when the semi-major axis equals 12352 km, the period can be in the range from 88 minutes for a very low orbit to 3.8 hours. If one wants a satellite to fly over some given spot on Earth every day at the same hour, it can do between 7 and 16 orbits per day, as shown in the following table. When one says that a Sun-synchronous orbit goes over a spot on the earth at the local time each time. The Sun will not be in exactly the same position in the sky during the course of the year, very often a frozen orbit is therefore selected that is slightly higher over the Southern hemisphere than over the Northern hemisphere. ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat of European Space Agency as well as the MetOp spacecraft of EUMETSAT are all operated in Sun-synchronous, orbital perturbation analysis Analemma Geosynchronous orbit Geostationary orbit List of orbits Polar orbit World Geodetic System Sandwell, David T. The Gravity Field of the Earth - Part 1 Sun-Synchronous Orbit dictionary entry, centennial of Flight Commission NASA Q&A Boain, Ronald J. The A-B-Cs of Sun Synchronous Orbit Design, List of satellites in Sun-synchronous orbit
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Orbit phasing
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In astrodynamics, orbit phasing is the adjustment of the time-position of spacecraft along its orbit, usually described as adjusting the orbiting spacecrafts true anomaly. Orbital phasing is primarily used in scenarios where a spacecraft in a given orbit must be moved to a different location within the same orbit. The change in position within the orbit is defined as the phase angle, ϕ. To gain or lose time, the spacecraft must be subjected to a simple two-impulse Hohmann transfer which takes the spacecraft away from. The first impulse to change the orbit is performed at a specific point in the original orbit. The impulse creates a new orbit called the “phasing orbit” and is larger or smaller than the original orbit resulting in a different period time than the original orbit. The difference in time between the original and phasing orbits will be equal to the time converted from the phase angle. When complete, the spacecraft will be in the final position within the original obit. To find some of the orbital parameters, first one must find the required period time of the phasing orbit using the following equation. Total change of velocity required for the maneuver is equal to two times ∆V. Orbit phasing can also be referenced as co-orbital rendezvous like an approach to a space station in a docking maneuver. Orbital maneuver Docking maneuver Hohmann transfer orbit General Curtis, Howard D, sellers, Jerry Jon, Marion, Jerry B. Understanding Space An Introduction to Astronautics, http, //arc. aiaa. org/doi/pdf/10. 2514/2.6921 Minimum-Time Orbital Phasing Maneuvers - AIAA, CD Hall -2003 Phasing Maneuver
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Ariane 1
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Ariane 1 was the first rocket in the Ariane family of expendable launch systems. It was developed and operated by the European Space Agency, which had formed in 1973. Ariane 1 was the first launcher to be developed with the purpose of sending commercial satellites into geosynchronous orbit. Crucially, it was designed with the ability of sending a pair of satellites into orbit on a single launcher, thus reducing costs. As the size of satellites grew, Ariane 1 quickly gave way to the more powerful Ariane 2 and Ariane 3 launchers, which were heavily based upon the original rocket. The Ariane 4 was the last rocket to heavily draw upon the Ariane 1, as a result, the Europa IIIB proposal was scaled back and soon reemerged as the L3S. In January 1973, Willy Brandt, the Chancellor of Germany, formally agreed to the L3S project following a series of approaches by Georges Pompidou. On 21 September 1973, the agreement for the L3S, was signed. Under this agreement, the Europa III was formally cancelled, while the L3S would be developed as a multinational project. Development of L3S was seen as a crucial test for the ESA, according to author Brian Harvey, L3S was one of the major European engineering projects in the last quarter of the century. Other major companies involved included the French electronics firm Matra, Swedish manufacturer Volvo, development of the third stage was a major focus point for the project - prior to Ariane, only the United States had ever flown a launcher that utilised hydrogen-powered upper stages. In order to accommodate Ariane launches, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, the former Europa launch site was re-designated as ELA1 and was rebuilt with a lowered base and elongated tower. While all Ariane launches would take place from French Guiana, rocket construction would be performed at Aérospatiales facility in Les Mureaux, Paris. This was considered a coup for the programme as Intelsat was viewed as heavily committed to using the rival Space Shuttle launcher for a large number of its satellites at that point. One week later, ESA announced its commitment to a run of 10 Ariane 1 launchers. There was considerable pressure for Ariane to perform its maiden flight prior to end of 1979, despite fears that the launch would have to be delayed for a month, it was decided to resume the countdown for a second attempt. CAT was successfully placed into an orbit of 202km by 35, 753km, with lift-off mass of 210,000 kg, Ariane 1 was able to put in geostationary transfer orbit one satellite or two smaller of a maximal weight of 1,850 kg. The cost of program is estimated at 2 billion euros, the Ariane 1 was a four-stage vehicle
18.
Ariane 4
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The Ariane 4 was an expendable launch system, designed by the Centre national détudes spatiales while being manufactured and marketed by its subsidiary Arianespace. The launcher became known as the workhorse of the Ariane family. Since its first flight on 15 June 1988 until the final flight, in 1982, the Ariane 4 programme was approved by the European Space Agency. Capable of being equipped with a variety of strap-on boosters. Once in service, the launcher soon became recognised for being ideal for launching communications and Earth observation satellites, as well as those used for scientific research. In February 2003, the final Ariane 4 was launched, Arianespace had decided to retire the type in favour of the newer and larger Ariane 5, which effectively replaced it in service. In 1973, eleven nations decided to pursue joint collaboration in the field of exploration and formed a new pan-national organisation to undertake this mission. By early 1986, the Ariane 1, along with the Ariane 2, the Ariane 4 would be a considerably larger and more flexible launcher that the earlier members of its family, being intended to compete with the upper end of launchers worldwide. Work on the Ariane 4 was substantially eased via drawing heavily on both the technology and experiences gained from producing and operating the earlier members of the Ariane rocket, the total development cost for the Ariane 4 was valued at 476 million European Currency Units in 1986. Posed with the requirement to produce a rocket with substantially greater thrust, overall, the Ariane 4 was 15 per cent smaller than the Ariane 3. Another innovation of the Ariane 4 was the dual-launch SPELDA fairing and this had the function of allowing a pair of satellites, one placed on top of the other, several different SPELDA nose fairings could be installed, including normal and extended models. The SPELDA was considerably lighter than its predecessor, the system also used much more accurate ring laser gyroscopes. According to aviation author Brian Harvey, the present in the design of the Ariane 4 represented a conservative and evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. As the Ariane 4 programme took shape, it gained the support of Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. This railway provided the benefit of enabling faulty rockets to be withdrawn from the pad. On 15 June 1988, the first successful launch of the Ariane 4 was conducted,50 seconds after take-off, the solid boosters would be expended and be detached in order to reduce the rockets weight. 143 seconds after take-off, the liquid boosters also detached, further lightening the vehicle, the maiden flight was considered a success, having put multiple satellites into orbit. For the V50 launch onwards, a third stage, known as the H10+, was adopted for the Ariane 4
19.
Sentinel-2
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It consists of two identical satellites, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B. At high latitudes, Sentinel-2 swath overlap and some regions will be observed twice or more every 5 days, the planned orbit is Sun synchronous at 786 km altitude,14.3 revolutions per day, with a 10,30 a. m. descending node. This local time was selected as a compromise between minimizing cloud cover and ensuring suitable Sun illumination and it is close to the Landsat local time and matches SPOTs, allowing the combination of Sentinel-2 data with historical images to build long-term time series. The two satellites will work on opposite sides of the orbit, the launch of the first satellite, Sentinel-2A, occurred 23 June 2015 at 01,52 UTC on a Vega launch vehicle. Sentinel-2B was launched on 7 March 2017 at 01,49 UTC, the Sentinel-2 satellites will each carry a single multi-spectral instrument with 13 spectral channels in the visible/near infrared and short wave infrared spectral range. It has a 150 mm aperture and a three-mirror anastigmat design with a length of about 600 mm. The mirrors are rectangular and made of carbide, a similar technology to those on the Gaia mission. Sentinel-2 will serve a range of applications related to Earths land surface. The mission will provide information for agricultural and forestry practices. Satellite images will be used to various plant indices such as leaf area chlorophyll. This is particularly important for effective yield prediction and applications related to Earth’s vegetation, as well as monitoring plant growth, Sentinel-2 can be used to map changes in land cover and to monitor the worlds forests. It will also provide information on pollution in lakes and coastal waters, images of floods, volcanic eruptions and landslides contribute to disaster mapping and help humanitarian relief efforts. Sentinel-2s multi-spectral imager undertakes systematic acquisition in a single observation mode, Level-1B, Top of atmosphere radiances in sensor geometry. Level-1B is composed of granules, one represents the sub-image one of the 12 detectors in the across track direction. Each Level-1B granule has a volume of approximately 27 MB. Level-1B products require expert knowledge of orthorectification techniques, level-1C, Top of atmosphere reflectances in fixed cartographic geometry. Level-1C images are a set of tiles of 100 km2, each of which is approximately 500 MB and these products contain applied radiometric and geometric corrections. Level-2A, Bottom of atmosphere reflectances in cartographic geometry and this product is currently processed on the user side by using a processor running on ESA’s Sentinel-2 Toolbox
20.
Astrium
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Astrium was an aerospace manufacturer subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company that provided civil and military space systems and services from 2006 to 2013. In 2012, Astrium had a turnover of €5.8 billion and 18,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Astrium was a member of Institute of Space, its Applications and Technologies. In late 2013 Astrium was merged with Cassidian, the division of EADS. EADS itself was reorganized as the Airbus Group, with three divisions that include Airbus, Airbus Defence and Space, and Airbus Helicopters, Astrium Satellites was one of the three business units of Astrium, a subsidiary of EADS. EADS Astrium Satellites employs around 8,348 people on nine sites in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, as of 15 October 2012, the CEO of Astrium is Eric Beranger who took over from Evert Dudok who became Astrium Services. Astrium was formed in 2000 by the merger of Matra Marconi Space with the division of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG. Henceforth Astrium was a joint venture between EADS and BAE Systems, on 16 June 2003 the minority shareholder, BAE Systems, sold its 25% share to EADS, making EADS the sole shareholder. Astrium became EADS Astrium Satellites and in a wider restructuring became the constituent of EADS Astrium. Also, Paradigm Secure Communications, initially created by Astrium in the frame of the Skynet 5 contract for the UK Ministry of Defence became the constituent of EADS SPACE Services. CASA Espacio became part of EADS Astrium on 1 January 2004, EADS Astrium is the sole shareholder of Infoterra Ltd. On 1 July 2006, the French subsidiary of EADS Astrium, EADS Astrium SAS, the name of the new company is Astrium SAS. Equivalent mergers have been achieved in 2006 in the other countries, the EADS group does not communicate about these mergers, excepted when required by the law, such as in contractual documents. EADS Astrium Space Transportation was formed in June 2003 from the Space Infrastructure division of Astrium, until July 2006 it was called EADS Space Transportation and was a fully owned subsidiary of EADS Space. In July 2006 the three subsidiaries of EADS Space were reintegrated into one company, EADS Astrium, of which EADS Astrium Space Transportation is a business division, currently 4397 employees work in the launcher segment. The Space Transportation company is the contractor for the Ariane 5 launcher, the Columbus Module of the International Space Station. It also builds launchers for the French nuclear missile program, such as the M51 SLBM and it joined the team led by Lockheed Martin for a bid on NASAs Crew Exploration Vehicle, being in charge of the crafts Mission Module. The team won a contract from NASA in June 2005, in 2005, EADS Astrium Space Transportation started a campaign in favour of a project called LIFE, for astronomy from the Moon surface. The company has facilities in France and in Germany, the facility in Germany is located in Bremen
21.
Azerbaijan
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Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a country in the South Caucasus region, situated at the crossroads of Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe. It is bound by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west and Iran to the south. The exclave of Nakhchivan is bound by Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence in 1918 and became the first democratic state in the Muslim orient world. The country was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, prior to the official dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. In September 1991, the Armenian majority of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region seceded to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the region and seven adjacent districts outside it became de facto independent with the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. These regions are recognized as part of Azerbaijan pending a solution to the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic, the country is a member state of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the NATO Partnership for Peace program. It is one of six independent Turkic states, a member of the Turkic Council. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 158 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations and it is one of the founding members of GUAM, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Its term of office began on 19 June 2006, Azerbaijan is also a member state of the Non-Aligned Movement, holds observer status in World Trade Organization and is a correspondent at the International Telecommunication Union. The Constitution of Azerbaijan does not declare an official religion and all political forces in the country are secularist. However, the majority of the population are of a Shiite Muslim background, Azerbaijan has a high level of human development which ranks on par with most Eastern European countries. It has a rate of economic development and literacy, as well as a low rate of unemployment. According to the Davos World Economic Forum, Azerbaijans economy has scored 37th place within 138 countries in 2016, Global Competitiveness Index 2015 indicates that Azerbaijan scores highest in its region. ASAN services, established with Presidential Decree, are known for eliminating bribery. ASAN Service has been awarded with United Nations Public Service Award 2015, the ruling party, the New Azerbaijan Party, has been accused of authoritarianism and human rights abuses. The original etymology of name is thought to have its roots in the once-dominant Zoroastrianism. In the Avesta, Frawardin Yasht, there is a mention of âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, the name Atropates itself is the Greek transliteration of an Old Iranian, probably Median, compounded name with the meaning Protected by the Fire or The Land of the Fire
22.
Star tracker
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A star tracker is an optical device that measures the position of star using photocell or a camera. A star tracker may include a processor to identify stars by comparing the pattern of observed stars with the pattern of stars in the sky. Star trackers, which require high sensitivity, may become confused by sunlight reflected from the spacecraft, star trackers are also susceptible to a variety of errors in addition to a variety of optical sources of error. There are also many sources of confusion for the star identification algorithm. There are roughly 57 bright navigational stars in common use, however, for more complex missions, entire star field databases are used to determine spacecraft orientation. These types of star catalogs can have thousands of stored in memory on board the spacecraft, or else processed using tools at the ground station
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Infrared
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It extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers, to 1000000 nm. Most of the radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared. Like all EMR, IR carries radiant energy, and behaves both like a wave and like its quantum particle, the photon, slightly more than half of the total energy from the Sun was eventually found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has an effect on Earths climate. Infrared radiation is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements and it excites vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines absorption and transmission of photons in the infrared range, Infrared radiation is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected, Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatuses. Thermal-infrared imaging is used extensively for military and civilian purposes, military applications include target acquisition, surveillance, night vision, homing, and tracking. Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 10 μm, Infrared radiation extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers to 1 mm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a range of approximately 430 THz down to 300 GHz. Below infrared is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sunlight, at a temperature of 5,780 kelvins, is composed of near thermal-spectrum radiation that is slightly more than half infrared. At zenith, sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level, of this energy,527 watts is infrared radiation,445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. Nearly all the radiation in sunlight is near infrared, shorter than 4 micrometers. On the surface of Earth, at far lower temperatures than the surface of the Sun, almost all thermal radiation consists of infrared in mid-infrared region, much longer than in sunlight. Of these natural thermal radiation processes only lightning and natural fires are hot enough to produce much visible energy, thermal infrared radiation also has a maximum emission wavelength, which is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of object, in accordance with Wiens displacement law. Therefore, the band is often subdivided into smaller sections. Due to the nature of the blackbody radiation curves, typical hot objects, such as exhaust pipes, the three regions are used for observation of different temperature ranges, and hence different environments in space
24.
Remote sensing
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Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object and thus in contrast to on-site observation. It may be split into active remote sensing and passive remote sensing, passive sensors gather radiation that is emitted or reflected by the object or surrounding areas. Reflected sunlight is the most common source of radiation measured by passive sensors, examples of passive remote sensors include film photography, infrared, charge-coupled devices, and radiometers. Active collection, on the hand, emits energy in order to scan objects and areas whereupon a sensor then detects. RADAR and LiDAR are examples of remote sensing where the time delay between emission and return is measured, establishing the location, speed and direction of an object. Remote sensing makes it possible to data of dangerous or inaccessible areas. Remote sensing applications include monitoring deforestation in areas such as the Amazon Basin, glacial features in Arctic and Antarctic regions, military collection during the Cold War made use of stand-off collection of data about dangerous border areas. Remote sensing also replaces costly and slow data collection on the ground, the basis for multispectral collection and analysis is that of examined areas or objects that reflect or emit radiation that stand out from surrounding areas. For a summary of major remote sensing satellite systems see the overview table, conventional radar is mostly associated with aerial traffic control, early warning, and certain large scale meteorological data. Other types of active collection includes plasmas in the ionosphere, interferometric synthetic aperture radar is used to produce precise digital elevation models of large scale terrain. Laser and radar altimeters on satellites have provided a range of data. By measuring the bulges of water caused by gravity, they map features on the seafloor to a resolution of a mile or so, by measuring the height and wavelength of ocean waves, the altimeters measure wind speeds and direction, and surface ocean currents and directions. Ultrasound and radar tide gauges measure sea level, tides and wave direction in coastal, light detection and ranging is well known in examples of weapon ranging, laser illuminated homing of projectiles. Vegetation remote sensing is an application of LIDAR. Radiometers and photometers are the most common instrument in use, collecting reflected and emitted radiation in a range of frequencies. The most common are visible and infrared sensors, followed by microwave, gamma ray and rarely and they may also be used to detect the emission spectra of various chemicals, providing data on chemical concentrations in the atmosphere. Simultaneous multi-spectral platforms such as Landsat have been in use since the 1970s and these thematic mappers take images in multiple wavelengths of electro-magnetic radiation and are usually found on Earth observation satellites, including the Landsat program or the IKONOS satellite. Landsat images are used by agencies such as KYDOW to indicate water quality parameters including Secchi depth, chlorophyll a density
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Geographic information system
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A geographic information system is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. What goes beyond a GIS is a spatial data infrastructure, a concept that has no such restrictive boundaries, in general, the term describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares, and displays geographic information. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries, analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, Geographic information science is the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems. GIS is a term that can refer to a number of different technologies, processes. It is attached to operations and has many applications related to engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics, insurance, telecommunications. For that reason, GIS and location intelligence applications can be the foundation for many location-enabled services that rely on analysis, GIS can relate unrelated information by using location as the key index variable. Locations or extents in the Earth space–time may be recorded as dates/times of occurrence, and x, y, and z coordinates representing, longitude, latitude, all Earth-based spatial–temporal location and extent references should be relatable to one another and ultimately to a real physical location or extent. This key characteristic of GIS has begun to open new avenues of scientific inquiry, the first known use of the term geographic information system was by Roger Tomlinson in the year 1968 in his paper A Geographic Information System for Regional Planning. Tomlinson is also acknowledged as the father of GIS, previously, one of the first applications of spatial analysis in epidemiology is the 1832 Rapport sur la marche et les effets du choléra dans Paris et le département de la Seine. The French geographer Charles Picquet represented the 48 districts of the city of Paris by halftone color gradient according to the number of deaths by cholera per 1,000 inhabitants and this was one of the earliest successful uses of a geographic methodology in epidemiology. The early 20th century saw the development of photozincography, which allowed maps to be split into layers, for one layer for vegetation. This work was drawn on glass plates but later plastic film was introduced, with the advantages of being lighter, using less storage space and being less brittle. When all the layers were finished, they were combined into one using a large process camera. Once color printing came in, the idea was also used for creating separate printing plates for each color. Computer hardware development spurred by nuclear weapon research led to general-purpose computer mapping applications by the early 1960s, the year 1960 saw the development of the worlds first true operational GIS in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development. A rating classification factor was added to permit analysis. CGIS was an improvement over computer mapping applications as it provided capabilities for overlay, measurement and it supported a national coordinate system that spanned the continent, coded lines as arcs having a true embedded topology and it stored the attribute and locational information in separate files. As a result of this, Tomlinson has become known as the father of GIS, CGIS lasted into the 1990s and built a large digital land resource database in Canada
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Weather satellite
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The weather satellite is a type of satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be polar orbiting, covering the entire Earth asynchronously, or geostationary, Meteorological satellites see more than clouds and cloud systems. City lights, fires, effects of pollution, auroras, sand and dust storms, snow cover, ice mapping, boundaries of currents, energy flows. Other types of information are collected using weather satellites. Weather satellite images helped in monitoring the volcanic ash cloud from Mount St. Helens, smoke from fires in the western United States such as Colorado and Utah have also been monitored. Other environmental satellites can detect changes in the Earths vegetation, sea state, ocean color, 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 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 and this was due to sparse data observation coverage and the expense of using cloud cameras on rockets. By 1958, the prototypes for TIROS and Vanguard were created. The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched on February 17,1959 and 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 VI and VII 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 more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA, 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, observation is typically made via different channels of the electromagnetic spectrum, in particular, the visible and infrared portions. Some of these channels include Visible and Near Infrared,0.6 μm –1.6 μm – For recording cloud cover during the day Infrared,3.9 μm –7.3 μm,8.7 μm, –13. Even wind can be determined by cloud patterns, alignments and movement from successive photos, 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 is designed to use one of two different classes of orbit, geostationary and polar orbiting
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Global Precipitation Measurement
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Global Precipitation Measurement is a joint mission between JAXA and NASA as well as other international space agencies to make frequent observations of Earth’s precipitation. It is part of NASAs Earth Systematic Missions program and works with a constellation to provide full global coverage. GPM builds on the successes of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. The project is managed by NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, and consists of a GPM Core Observatory satellite assisted by a constellation of spacecraft from other agencies and missions. The Core Observatory satellite measures the two and three dimensional structure of Earth’s precipitation patterns and provides a new standard for the rest of the satellite constellation. The GPM Core Observatory was assembled and tested at Goddard Space Flight Center, the launch occurred on February 28,2014 at 3, 37am JST on the first attempt. Agencies in the United States, Japan, India and France operate the satellites in the constellation for agency-specific goals. The DPR is a radar, providing three-dimensional maps of storm structure across its swath. The DPR has two frequencies, allowing researchers to estimate the sizes of particles and detect a wider range of precipitation rates. The Ku-band radar, similar to the PR on TRMM, covers a 245 km swath, nested inside that, the Ka-band radar covers a 120 km swath. The GMI is a sensor that observes the microwave energy emitted by the Earth. These data allow quantitative maps of precipitation across a swath that is 885 km wide and this instrument continues the legacy of TRMM microwave observations, while adding four additional channels, better resolution, and more reliable calibration. GPM produces and distributes a variety of precipitation data products. Processing takes place at the Precipitation Processing System at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, all data from the mission is made freely available to the public on NASA websites. NASA Socials JAXA-NASA DC Cherry Blossom Event April 12,2013, at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland GPM Media DayFriday, bharghav discuss the importance of GPM and its positive impact on Earth. In the movie the GPM satellite is launched by the Space Shuttle, a short anime film of 6 minutes, Dual frequency Precipitation Radar Special Movie, was produced by JAXA and White Fox in 2013. Official website GPM videos Official website Global Precipitation Measurement/ Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar pamphlet videos Twitter and Facebook
28.
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
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The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission was a joint space mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency designed to monitor and study tropical rainfall. The term refers to both the mission itself and the satellite that the used to collect data. TRMM was part of NASAs Mission to Planet Earth, a long-term, the satellite was launched on November 27,1997 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Tanegashima, Japan. As of July 2014, fuel to maintain orbital altitude was insufficient and NASA ceased station-keeping maneuvers for TRMM, re-entry was originally expected sometime between May 2016 and November 2017. The probe was turned off on April 9,2015 after its orbital decay accelerated, re-entry occurred on June 16,2015 at 06,54 UTC. Tropical precipitation is a parameter to measure, due to large spatial and temporal variations. However, understanding tropical precipitation is important for weather and climate prediction, prior to TRMM, the distribution of rainfall worldwide was known to only a 50% degree of uncertainty. The concept for TRMM was first proposed in 1984, the science objectives, as first proposed, were, To advance understanding of the global energy and water cycles by providing distributions of rainfall and latent heating over the global Tropics. To provide rain and latent heating distributions to improve the initialization of models ranging from 24-hour forecasts to short-range climate variations. To help to understand, to diagnose, and to predict the onset and development of the El Niño, Southern Oscillation, to help to understand the effect that rainfall has on the ocean thermohaline circulations and the structure of the upper ocean. To allow cross calibration between TRMM and other sensors with life expectancies beyond that of TRMM itself, to evaluate the diurnal variability of tropical rainfall globally. To evaluate a system for rainfall measurements. Japan joined the study for the TRMM mission in 1986. The project received support from the U. S. congress in 1991. TRMM launched from Tanegashima Space Center on 27 November 1997, the Precipitation Radar was the first space-borne instrument designed to provide three-dimensional maps of storm structure. The measurements yielded information on the intensity and distribution of the rain, on the type, on the storm depth. The estimates of the heat released into the atmosphere at different heights based on these measurements can be used to improve models of the atmospheric circulation. The PR operated at 13.8 GHz and measured the 3-d rainfall distribution over land and it defined a layer depth of perception and hence measured rainfall that actually reached the latent heat of atmosphere
29.
Landsat 7
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Landsat 7 is the seventh satellite of the Landsat program. Launched on April 15,1999, Landsat 7s primary goal is to refresh the global archive of photos, providing up-to-date. The Landsat Program is managed and operated by the USGS, the NASA World Wind project allows 3D images from Landsat 7 and other sources to be freely navigated and viewed from any angle. The satellites companion, Earth Observing-1, trails by one minute, Landsat 7 was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. Landsat 7 was designed to last for five years, and has the capacity to collect and it is in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit, meaning it scans across the entire earths surface. With an altitude of 705 kilometers +/-5 kilometers, it takes 232 orbits, or 16 days, the satellite weighs 1973 kg, is 4.04 m long, and 2.74 m in diameter. Unlike its predecessors, Landsat 7 has a solid state memory of 378 gigabits, the main instrument on board Landsat 7 is the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus. The SLC consists of a pair of mirrors that rotate about an axis in tandem with the motion of the main ETM+ scan mirror. The purpose of the SLC is to compensate for the motion of the spacecraft so that the resulting scans are aligned parallel to each other. Without the effects of the SLC, the instrument images the Earth in a fashion, resulting in some areas that are imaged twice. The net effect is that approximately 22% of the data in a Landsat 7 scene is missing when acquired without a functional SLC, following the SLC failure, an Anomaly Response Team was assembled, consisting of representatives from the USGS, NASA, and Hughes Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The team assembled a list of possible scenarios, most of which pointed at a mechanical problem with the SLC itself. Since there is no backup SLC, a failure would indicate that the problem was permanent. However, the team was unable to rule out the possibility of an electrical failure, though such a possibility was deemed remote. This operation was successful, and on September 5,2003 and it was immediately apparent that the migration to the Side-B electrical harness had not fixed the problem with the SLC. Following this, the instrument was reconfigured again to use its primary electrical harness, the subsequent conclusion of the ART was that the SLC problem was mechanical and permanent in nature. Landsat 7 continues to acquire data in this mode, Data products are available with the missing data optionally filled in using other Landsat 7 data selected by the user. In 2013, Landsat 7 was joined by Landsat 8, the contract was part of the NASA Scientific Data Purchase which was administrated through NASAs John C. Stennis Space Center
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QuikSCAT
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The NASA QuikSCAT is an Earth observation satellite carrying the SeaWinds scatterometer. Its primary mission is to measure the wind speed and direction over the ice-free global oceans. This SeaWinds scatterometer is referred to as the QuikSCAT scatterometer to distinguish it from the nearly identical SeaWinds scatterometer flown on the ADEOS-2 satellite, QuikSCAT was launched on 19 June 1999 with an initial 3-year mission requirement. QuikSCAT was a recovery mission replacing the NASA Scatterometer, which failed prematurely in June 1997 after just 9.5 months in operation. The QuikSCAT geophysical data record spans from 19 July 1999 to 21 November 2009, because of its wide swath and lack of in-swath gaps, QuikSCAT was able to collect at least one vector wind measurement over 93% of the Worlds Oceans each day. This improved significantly over the 77% coverage provided by NSCAT, each day, QuikSCAT recorded over 400,000 measurements of wind speed and direction. This is hundreds of more surface wind measurements than are collected routinely from ships. QuikSCAT provided measurements of the speed and direction referenced to 10 meters above the sea surface at a spatial resolution of 25 km. Wind information cannot be retrieved within 15–30 km of coastlines or in the presence of sea ice, precipitation generally degrades the wind measurement accuracy, although useful wind and rain information can still be obtained in mid-latitude and tropical cyclones for monitoring purposes. It can, however, still measure radar backscatter at an azimuth angle. A NASA Senior Review panel in 2011 endorsed the continuation of the QuikSCAT mission with these objectives through 2013. SeaWinds uses a dish antenna with two spot beams that sweep in a circular pattern. The antenna consists of a 1-meter diameter rotating dish that produces two spot beams, sweeping in a circular pattern and it radiates 110 W microwave pulses at a pulse repetition frequency of 189 Hz. QuikSCAT operates at a frequency of 13.4 GHz, which is in the Ku-band of microwave frequencies, at this frequency, the atmosphere is mostly transparent to non-precipitating clouds and aerosols, although rain produces significant alteration of the signal. The spacecraft is in an orbit, with equatorial crossing times of ascending swaths at about 06,00 LST ±30 minutes. Along the equator, consecutive swaths are separated by 2,800 km, QuikSCAT orbits Earth at an altitude of 802 km and at a speed of about 7 km per second. Scatterometers such as QuikSCAT emit pulses of microwave radiation and measure the power reflected back to its receiving antenna from the wind-roughened sea surface. Gravity and capillary waves on the sea caused by the wind reflect or backscatter power emitted from the scatterometer radar primarily by means of a Bragg resonance condition
31.
Terra (satellite)
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Terra is a multi-national NASA scientific research satellite in a Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth. It is the flagship of the Earth Observing System, the name Terra comes from the Latin word for Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on December 18,1999, aboard an Atlas IIAS vehicle and it was placed into a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705km, with a 10, 30am descending node. Studies have used instruments on Terra to examine trends in global carbon monoxide, the data collected by Terra will ultimately become a new, 15-year global data set. In June and October 2008 the spacecraft was targeted by hackers who gained unauthorized access to its command and control systems, aqua Aura Man-made structures visible from space NASA Terra site
32.
ACRIMSAT
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The Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite, or ACRIMSAT is a defunct satellite and instrument that was one of the 21 observational components of NASAs Earth Observing System program. The instrument followed upon the ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 instruments that were launched on multi-instrument satellite platforms, ACRIMSAT was launched on 20 December 1999 from Vandenberg Air Force Base as the secondary payload on the Taurus rocket that launched KOMPSAT. It was placed into a high inclination,700 km. sun-synchronous orbit from which the ACRIM3 instrument monitored total solar irradiance, contact with the satellite was lost on 14 December 2013. ACRIM3 made measurements of the TSI since the start of its mission in April 2000 and it extended the TSI measurement database begun by earlier ACRIM instruments on the NASA Solar Maximum Mission and Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. ACRIMSAT/ACRIM3 tracked TSI during a 2004 transit of Venus and measured the 0. 1% reduction in the solar intensity caused by the planets shadow and it also recorded data for the 2012 Transit of Venus. On 14 December 2013, ACRIMSAT went silent, with attempts to reestablish contact proving unsuccessful, the mostly likely cause has been attributed to the failure of aging batteries. The defunct spacecraft will remain in orbit for approximately 64 years before returning to Earth, Willson was the principal investigator and led the science team. Willson designed the active cavity radiometer type of sensor used by self-calibrating satellite TSI monitoring experiments, the ACRIM3 instrument was a collaboration between Willson, original JPL/ACRIMSAT Project Manager Ronald Zenone and ACRIM3 Instrument Scientist Roger Helizon. The Mission is controlled using the ACRIMSAT tracking station at the Jet Propulsion Labs Table Mountain Observatory in Southern California, co-Investigators are, Nicola Scafetta, Hugh Hudson and Alexander Mordvinov. ACRIMSAT is a spin-stabilized, single-purpose satellite constructed by Orbital Sciences Corporation and its total cost, including the instrument, launch, ground station, operations and science team activities during its 14-year mission was less than $50 million. AcrimSat Launch ACRIM Science Team homepage ACRIMSAT Project homepage Fact sheet on the mission ACRIMSAT, NASA Science Missions
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New Millennium Program
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New Millennium Program was a NASA project with focus on engineering validation of new technologies for space applications. Funding for the program was eliminated from the FY2009 budget by the 110th United States Congress, the spacecraft in the New Millennium Program were originally named Deep Space and Earth Observing. With a refocussing of the program in 2000, the Deep Space series was renamed Space Technology, Deep Space 1 – standalone spacecraft testing solar electric propulsion, autonomous operation etc. New Millennium Program site at Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Earth Observing-1
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Its Advanced Land Imager measures nine different wavelengths simultaneously, instead of the seven measured by the imager in Landsat 7. This permits a greater flexibility in false-color imagery, in order to compare the two imagers, EO-1 follows Landsat 7 in its orbit by exactly one minute. EO-1 has also used to test new software, like the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment. This allows the spacecraft to decide for itself how best to create a desired image and it is only limited by a priority list of different types of images, and by forecasts of cloud cover provided by the NOAA. It was expected to function for months and was designed to function for eighteen months. Those expectations were greatly exceeded however the fuel was mostly depleted in February 2011. Small maneuvers have been successful for debris avoidance but long duration burns for orbit maintenance are not being performed due to insufficient fuel, EO-1 was deactivated on 30 March 2017. At its current altitude, it is estimated that the satellite will remain in orbit until the 2050s, Earth observation satellite EO1 Mission Overview. Delta 2 Rocket Puts Three Satellites into Earth Orbit, Earth Observing-1 at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Jason-1
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The lineage of the name begins with the JASO1 meeting in Toulouse, France to study the problems of assimilating altimeter data in models. Jason as an acronym also stands for Joint Altimetry Satellite Oceanography Network, additionally it is used to reference the mythical quest for knowledge of Jason and the Argonauts. It is the successor to the TOPEX/Poseidon mission, which measured ocean surface topography from 1992 through 2005, like its predecessor, Jason-1 is a joint project between the NASA and CNES space agencies. Jason-1s successor, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission on the Jason-2 satellite, was launched in June 2008 and these satellites provide a unique global view of the oceans that is impossible to acquire using traditional ship-based sampling. As did TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 uses an altimeter to measure the hills and these measurements of sea surface topography allow scientists to calculate the speed and direction of ocean currents and monitor global ocean circulation. The global ocean is Earths primary storehouse of solar energy, Jason-1s measurements of sea surface height reveal where this heat is stored, how it moves around Earth by ocean currents, and how these processes affect weather and climate. Jason-1 was launched on December 7,2001 from Californias Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Delta II rocket, during the first months Jason-1 shared an almost identical orbit to TOPEX/Poseidon, which allowed for cross calibration. At the end of period, the older satellite was moved to a new orbit midway between each Jason ground track. Jason has a cycle of 10 days. On 16 March 2002, Jason-1 experienced a sudden attitude upset, soon after this incident, two new small pieces of space debris were observed in orbits slightly lower than Jason-1s, and spectroscopic analysis eventually proved them to have originated from Jason-1. In 2011, it was determined that the pieces of debris had most likely been ejected from Jason-1 by an unidentified, small high-speed particle hitting one of the spacecrafts solar panels. Orbit maneuvers in 2009 put the Jason-1 satellite on the side of Earth from the Jason-2 satellite. Jason-1 now flies over the region of the ocean that Jason-2 flew over five days earlier. Its ground tracks fall midway between those of Jason-2, which are about 315 kilometers apart at the equator and this interleaved tandem mission provides twice the number of measurements of the oceans surface, bringing smaller features such as ocean eddies into view. The tandem mission also helps pave the way for a future ocean altimeter mission that would much more detailed data with its single instrument than the two Jason satellites now do together. The program is named after the Greek mythological hero Jason, Jason-1 has five 5 instruments, Poseidon 2 - Nadir pointing Radar Altimeter using C band and Ku band for measuring height above sea surface. Jason Microwave Radiometer - measures water vapor along altimeter path to correct for pulse delay DORIS for orbit determination to within 10 cm or less, the Jason-1 satellite, its altimeter instrument and a position-tracking antenna were built in France. The radiometer, Global Positioning System receiver and laser retroreflector array were built in the United States, TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 have led to major advances in the science of physical oceanography and in climate studies
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Ocean Surface Topography Mission
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Like its two predecessors, OSTM/Jason-2 uses high-precision ocean altimetry to measure the distance between the satellite and the ocean surface to within a few centimeters. OSTM/Jason-2 was launched at 07,46 UTC on June 20,2008, from Space Launch Complex 2W at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, the spacecraft separated from the rocket 55 minutes later. It is now in a 1,336 km circular, non-sun-synchronous orbit at an inclination of 66 degrees to Earths equator, Jason-1 has been moved to the opposite side of Earth and now flies over the same region of the ocean that Jason-2 flew over five days earlier. Jason-1s ground tracks fall midway between those of Jason-2, which are about 315 kilometers apart at the equator and this interleaved tandem mission provides twice the number of measurements of the oceans surface, bringing smaller features such as ocean eddies into view. The tandem mission also helps pave the way for a future ocean altimeter mission that would much more detailed data with its single instrument than the two Jason satellites now do together. With OSTM/Jason-2, ocean altimetry makes the transition from research into operational mode and these instruments send a microwave pulse to the ocean’s surface and time how long it takes to return. A microwave radiometer corrects any delay that may be caused by water vapor in the atmosphere, other corrections are also required to account for the influence of electrons in the ionosphere and the dry air mass of the atmosphere. Combining these data with the location of the spacecraft makes it possible to determine sea-surface height to within a few centimetres. The strength and shape of the signal also provides information on wind speed. These data are used in models to calculate the speed and direction of ocean currents and the amount and location of heat stored in the ocean. Another payload aboard Jason-2 is the T2L2 instrument, T2L2 is used to synchronize atomic clocks at ground stations, and to calibrate the on-board clock of the Jason-2 DORIS instrument. On 6 November 2008 CNES reported the T2L2 instrument was working well, OSTM/Jason-2 is a joint effort by four organizations. After completing the on-orbit commissioning of the spacecraft, CNES handed over operation, CNES will process, distribute and archive the research-quality data products that will become available in 2009. EUMETSAT will process and distribute operational data received by its station to users in Europe. NOAA will process and distribute operational data received by its stations to non-European users. NOAA and EUMETSAT will generate the products and distribute them to users. NASA will evaluate the performance of its instruments, the microwave radiometer, the Global Positioning System payload. In addition, NASA and CNES will validate scientific data products, NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington
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Jason-3
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Jason-3 is the result of a four-agency international partnership consisting of NOAA, NASA, the French Space Agency CNES, and EUMETSAT. The spacecraft was built by Thales Alenia Space and launched by SpaceX on the 21st Falcon 9 flight, a pair of deployable, tracking solar arrays supply a total of 580 watts of power. Four hydrazine monopropellant thrusters are used for orbital maneuvering, attitude control is provided by reaction wheels, with magnetorquers used to periodically despin the wheels. Jason-3 weighed about 553 kg at launch, with a dry mass of 525 kg, the primary instrument is the Poseidon-3B Altimeter, which is derived from the Poseidon-3 carried on Jason-2. The other main instruments are Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite, Advanced Microwave Radiometer-2, Global Positioning System Payload, two additional passenger instruments are carried as part of the Joint Radiation Experiment. These are CARMEN-3, which measures charged particle flux, and Light Particle Telescope, appearing on the SpaceX manifest as early as July 2013, Jason-3 was originally scheduled for launch on July 22,2015. However, this date was pushed back to August 19 following the discovery of contamination in one of the thrusters, requiring the thruster to be replaced. The launch was delayed by several months due to the loss of a Falcon 9 rocket with the CRS-7 mission on June 28. A 7-second static fire test of the rocket was completed on January 11,2016, the Launch Readiness Review was signed off by all parties on January 15,2016, and the launch proceeded successfully on January 17,2016, at 18,42 UTC. The Jason-3 payload was deployed into its orbit at 830 miles altitude after an orbital insertion burn about 56 minutes into the flight. It was the 21st Falcon 9 flight overall and the second into an orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 4E in California. This attempt followed the first successful landing and booster recovery on the launch in December 2015. The controlled descent through the atmosphere and landing attempt for each booster is an arrangement that is not used on other launch vehicles. Approximately nine minutes into the flight, the video feed from the drone ship went down due to the losing its lock on the uplink satellite. Elon Musk later reported that the first stage did touch down smoothly on the ship, debris from the fire, including several rocket engines attached to the octaweb assembly, arrived back to shore on board the floating landing platform on January 18,2016
38.
Meteor (satellite)
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The Meteor spacecraft are weather observation satellites launched by the USSR and Russia. The Meteor satellite series was developed during the 1960s, the Meteor satellites were designed to monitor atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures, humidity, radiation, sea ice conditions, snow-cover, and clouds. Meteor 1-26 is considered to be the most likely candidate for a the 7 January 2016 satellite near collision, meteor-1 launches Meteor-2-21/Fizeau is the twenty-first and last in the Meteor-2 series of Russian meteorological satellites, which were launched 22 times from 1975 to 1993. ILRS Mission Support Status, Satellite Laser Ranging tracking support of satellite was discontinued in October 1998. What makes Meteor-2-21 distinctive from the other meteorological satellites is its unique retroreflector array, Fizeau is named after a French physicist, Armand Fizeau, who in 1851 conducted an experiment which tested for the aether convection coefficient. SLR tracking of this satellite was used for orbit determination. The Fizeau experiment tests the theory of special relativity – that distance events that are simultaneous for one observer will not be simultaneous for an observer in motion relative to the first. The central cube is made of fused silica and has a two-lobe Far Field Diffraction Pattern providing nearly equal intensities for compensated and uncompensated velocity aberration, both outer reflectors have aluminum coating on the reflecting surfaces and near-diffraction-limited FFDPs. One of the end reflectors is made of fused silica with an index of refraction of 1.46, the other end reflector is made of fused glass with an index of refraction of 1.62 and should provide a perfect compensation of the velocity aberration. SLR full-rate data from MOBLAS4, MOBLAS7, and Maidanak seem to confirm the presence of the influence of the Fizeau effect. Resur-1, another Russian satellite launched in 1994, has 2 corner cubes reflectors with near diffraction-limited FFDPs, WESTPAC, a future SLR satellite, will verify indisputably the existence or otherwise of the Fizeau effect. All the satellites were launched on Tsyklon-3 rockets and these satellites provide weather information including data on clouds, ice and snow cover, atmospheric radiation and humidity. The Meteor-3 class of satellites orbit in a higher altitude than the Meteor-2 class of satellites thus providing more coverage of the Earths surface. The Meteor-3 has the payload as the Meteor-2 but also includes an advanced scanning radiometer with better spectral and spatial resolution. Meteorological data is transmitted to four sites in the former Soviet Union in conjunction with about 80 other smaller sites. Meteor-3 launches Meteor-3-5, launched in 1991, is in a higher orbit than Meteor-2-21. Mechanically, it is similar to Meteor-2-21, which satellite was in operation depended on the sun angles and consequently the seasons. Meteor-3-5 was usually the summer satellite while 2-21 was in operation for approximately the half-year centered on winter, the satellite carried the second Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer aloft as the first and the last American-built instrument to fly on a Soviet spacecraft
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Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
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By measuring gravity anomalies, GRACE shows how mass is distributed around the planet and how it varies over time. Data from the GRACE satellites is an important tool for studying Earths ocean, geology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for the overall mission management under the NASA ESSP program. The principal investigator is Dr. Byron Tapley of the University of Texas Center for Space Research, the GRACE satellites were launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia on a Rockot launch vehicle, on March 17,2002. The spacecraft were launched to an altitude of approximately 500 km at a near-polar inclination of 89°. The satellites are separated by approximately 200 km along their orbit track, GRACE has far exceeded its designed five-year lifespan. As of March 2017 the GRACE spacecrafts orbit has decayed by 150 km, GRACE chiefly detects changes in the distribution of water across the planet. Scientists use GRACE data to estimate ocean bottom pressure—as important to oceanographers as atmospheric pressure is to meteorologists, high-resolution static gravity fields estimated from GRACE data have helped improve the understanding of global ocean circulation. The hills and valleys in the surface are due to currents. GRACE enables separation of two effects to better measure ocean currents and their effect on climate. GRACE data have provided a record of loss within the ice sheets of Greenland. Greenland has been found to lose 280 ±58 Gt of ice per year between 2003 and 2013, while Antarctica has lost 67±44 Gt per year in the same period and these equate to a total of 0.9 mm/yr of sea level rise. GRACE data have provided insights into regional hydrology inaccessible to other forms of remote sensing, for example. The annual hydrology of the Amazon river basin provides a strong signal when viewed by GRACE. The most over-stressed is the Arabian aquifer system upon which more than 60 million people depend for water, GRACE also detects changes in the gravity field due to geophysical processes. Glacial isostatic adjustment— the slow rise of land masses once depressed by the weight of ice sheets from the last ice age—is chief among these signals. GIA signals appear as secular trends in gravity field measurements and must be removed to accurately estimate changes in water, GRACE is also sensitive to permanent changes in the gravity field due to earthquakes. For instance, GRACE data have been used to analyze the shifts in the Earths crust caused by the earthquake created the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. GRACE is sensitive to variations in the mass of the atmosphere
40.
Aqua (satellite)
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Aqua is a multi-national NASA scientific research satellite in orbit around the Earth, studying the precipitation, evaporation, and cycling of water. It is the major component of the Earth Observing System preceded by Terra. The name Aqua comes from the Latin word for water, the satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on May 4,2002, aboard a Delta II rocket. Aqua is on a Sun-synchronous orbit and it flies as the second in the satellite formation called the A Train with several other satellites. Furnished by the National Space Development Agency of Japan, MODIS — Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, also measures cloud properties and radiative energy flux, also aerosol properties, land cover and land use change, fires and volcanoes. This instrument is also aboard Terra, aMSU-A — Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit — measures atmospheric temperature and humidity. AIRS — Atmospheric Infrared Sounder — measures atmospheric temperature and humidity, land, HSB — Humidity Sounder for Brazil — VHF band equipment measuring atmospheric humidity. Furnished by Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais of Brazil, the HSB instrument has been in survival mode since 2/5/2003. CERES — Clouds and the Earths Radiant Energy System, Flying Models 3 and 4, the Aqua spacecraft has a mass of about 2,850 kilograms, plus propellant of about 230 kilograms. Stowed, the satellite is 2.68 m x 2.49 m x 6.49 m. Deployed, Aqua is 4.81 m x 16.70 m x 8.04 m. Terra Aura NASA Aqua site Aqua Mission Profile by NASAs Solar System Exploration Mission Control Tunes Up Aquas Orbit, August 20,2009
41.
Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment
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The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment is a NASA-sponsored satellite mission that measures incoming X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared, and total solar radiation. These measurements specifically address long-term climate change, natural variability and enhanced climate prediction and these measurements are critical to studies of the Sun, its effect on our Earth system and its influence on humankind. The SORCE spacecraft launched on January 25,2003 on a Pegasus XL launch vehicle to provide NASAs Earth Science Enterprise with precise measurements of solar radiation, SORCE measures the Suns output using radiometers, spectrometers, photodiodes, detectors, and bolometers mounted on a satellite observatory. The SORCE satellite orbits the Earth accumulating solar data, Spectral measurements identify the irradiance of the Sun by characterizing the Suns energy and emissions in the form of color that can then be translated into quantities and elements of matter. Data obtained by the SORCE experiment can be used to model the Suns output and to explain and predict the effect of the Suns radiation on the Earths atmosphere and climate. Flying in a 645 km, 40 degree orbit, SORCE is operated by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado. It will continue the precise measurements of solar irradiance that began with the ERB instrument in 1979 and has continued to the present with the ACRIM series of measurements. SORCE will also provide the measurements of the spectral irradiance from 1 nm to 2000 nm. SORCE carries four instruments including the Total Irradiance Monitor, Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment, Spectral Irradiance Monitor, achieve this spectral irradiance measurement with an accuracy of better than 5%, and with a long-term repeatability of 0. 5%/yr. Use the solar/stellar comparison technique to relate the solar irradiance to the average flux from a number of bright. To make the first measurements of the visible and near IR solar irradiance with sufficient precision for future climate studies, the Spectral Irradiance Monitor is a spectrometer that provides long-duration solar spectral irradiance measurements in the visible and near infrared
42.
Aura (satellite)
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Aura is a multi-national NASA scientific research satellite in orbit around the Earth, studying the Earths ozone layer, air quality and climate. It is the major component of the Earth Observing System following on Terra. Aura follows on from the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, the name Aura comes from the Latin word for air. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on July 15,2004, the Aura spacecraft has a mass of about 1,765 kg. The body is 6.9 m long with the extended single solar panel about 15 m long, Aura flies in a sun-synchronous orbit, in formation with 6 other satellites, collectively known as the A Train. The other satellites in the formation are, Aqua CALIPSO CloudSat GCOM-W1 OCO-2 PARASOL All satellites have an equatorial crossing time at about 1,30 in the afternoon, developed jointly with the United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council. The HIRDLS chopper shutdown on March 17,2008, and has not produced science since, MLS — Microwave Limb Sounder — measures emissions from ozone, chlorine and other trace gases, and clarifies the role of water vapor in global warming. OMI — Ozone Monitoring Instrument — uses ultraviolet and visible radiation to produce daily high-resolution maps, developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes. TES — Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer — measures tropospheric ozone in infrared wavelengths, also carbon monoxide, methane, Terra Aqua NASA site Aura validation data centre Aura Mission Profile by NASAs Solar System Exploration
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CloudSat
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CloudSat is a NASA Earth observation satellite, which was launched on a Delta II rocket on April 28,2006. It uses radar to measure the altitude and properties of clouds, CloudSat flies in formation in the A Train, with several other satellites, Aqua, Aura, CALIPSO and the French PARASOL. The mission was selected under NASAs Earth System Science Pathfinder program in 1999, ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, designed and built the spacecraft. CloudSats primary mission was scheduled to continue for 22 months in order to more than one seasonal cycle to be observed. The main instrument on CloudSat is the Cloud Profiling Radar, a 94-GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar. The radar instrument was developed at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the overall design of the CPR is simple, well understood, and has a strong heritage from the many cloud radars already in operation in ground-based and airborne applications. Most of the parameters and subsystem configurations are nearly identical to those for the Airborne Cloud Radar. The CPR capitalizes on existing expertise and experience at JPL. Based on radar data, NASA expects the radar to operate for three years with a 99% probability. CloudSat is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Colorado State University provides scientific leadership and science data processing and distribution. The cost of project is approximately 200 million dollars
