1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
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
7.
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
8.
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
9.
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
10.
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
11.
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
12.
Landsat 8
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Landsat 8 is an American Earth observation satellite launched on February 11,2013. It is the satellite in the Landsat program, the seventh to reach orbit successfully. Originally called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, it is a collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey, the satellite was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, who served as prime contractor for the mission. The spacecrafts instruments were constructed by Ball Aerospace and NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, in December 2009, a decision was made to add a thermal infrared sensor to the mission payload. The satellite was launched aboard an Atlas V401 carrier rocket with an Extended Payload Fairing, the launch took place at 18,02 UTC on 11 February 2013, from Space Launch Complex 3E at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Seventy eight minutes and thirty seconds later, the spacecraft separated from the Atlas V upper stage, first images from the spacecraft were collected on March 18,2013. Landsat 8 joins Landsat 7 on-orbit, providing increased coverage of the Earths surface, respectively, these two instruments collect image data for nine shortwave bands and two longwave thermal bands. The satellite has developed with a 5.25 years mission design life but has enough fuel on board to provide for upwards of ten years of operations. Landsat 8 captures more than 700 scenes a day, an increase from the 250 scenes a day on Landsat 7, the OLI and TIRS sensors will see improved signal to noise radiometric performance, enabling 12-bit quantization of data allowing for more bits for better land-cover characterization. The spacecraft supplies power, orbit and attitude control, communications, all components, except for the propulsion module, are mounted on the exterior of the primary structure. A single deployable solar array generates power for the spacecraft components, a 3. 14-terabit solid state data recorder provides data storage aboard the spacecraft and an X-band antenna transmits OLI and TIRS data either in real time or played back from the data recorder. The OLI and TIRS are mounted on a bench at the forward end of the spacecraft. Landsat 8s Operational Land Imager improves on past Landsat sensors and was built, under contract to NASA, OLI uses a technological approach demonstrated by the Advanced Land Imager sensor flown on NASA’s experimental EO-1 satellite. The OLI instrument uses a pushbroom sensor instead of sensors that were utilized on earlier Landsat satellites. With over 7,000 detectors per spectral band, the design results in increased sensitivity, fewer moving parts. OLI collects data from nine spectral bands, the TIRS focal plane uses GaAs Quantum Well Infrared Photodetector arrays for detecting the infrared radiation—a first for the Landsat program. The TIRS data will be registered to OLI data to create radiometrically, geometrically, like OLI, TIRS employs a pushbroom sensor design with a 185 kilometer swath width. Data for two long wavelength infrared bands will be collected with TIRS and this provides data continuity with Landsat 7s single thermal IR band and adds a second
