Global Precipitation Measurement
| Global Precipitation Measurement | ||||||||||
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| Phase : / Status : active | ||||||||||
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| Type: | Earth observation satellite | |||||||||
| Organization: | JAXA / NASA | |||||||||
| COSPAR designation : | 2014-009C | |||||||||
| Mission dates | ||||||||||
| Start date: | February 27, 2014, 18:37 UTC | |||||||||
| Starting place: | Tanegashima LA-Y | |||||||||
| Launcher: | HII-A 202 F-23 | |||||||||
| Orbit data | ||||||||||
| Origin of coordinates: | earth | |||||||||
| Track height: | 407 km | |||||||||
| Rotation time : | 93 min | |||||||||
| Orbit inclination : | 65 ° | |||||||||
| General spacecraft data | ||||||||||
| Takeoff mass: | 3850 kg | |||||||||
| Payload data | ||||||||||
| Instruments: |
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| Others | ||||||||||
| Previous mission: |
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission | |||||||||
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Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) is an earth observation satellite jointly developed by the Japanese space agency JAXA and the US NASA .
He was born on February 27, 2014 at 18:37 UTC with a Japanese H-IIA - carrier rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center and seven other much smaller satellites ( Ginrei , INVADER , KSAT-2 , OPUSAT , STARS II , TeikyoSat-3 and ITF-1 ) placed in low earth orbit.
The satellite is equipped with a microwave camera (GPM Microwave Imager = GMI) and a dual-frequency radar measuring device (Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar = DPR) and should observe cloud formations as well as rain and snowfalls around the globe. Among other things, this involves predicting catastrophic droughts. The GMI records precipitation intensities and horizontal patterns, while the DPR provides insights into the three-dimensional structure of particles. Together, these two instruments form a database of measurements that can be compared with observations in the microwave range from other satellites and combined to produce a data set of global precipitation. A new global picture of the situation should be available every three hours. It has a planned lifespan of three years.
Instruments
The GMI was developed by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation on behalf of NASA. It works in 13 channels from 10 GHz to 183 GHz, is equipped with a 1.2 m antenna and has a swath width of 904 km.
The DPR provides three-dimensional information about the precipitation of particles via the energy reflected by these particles at different heights within the cloud. The use of two frequencies allows the radar to infer the sizes of the precipitation particles and thus offer insights into the physical properties of a storm. The scan in the Ka frequency band (35.5 GHz) covers an area of 125 km width on the earth's surface and is within the scan of the Ku band frequency (13.6 GHz) of 254 km width. The instrument was developed and built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japan National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b SPIEGEL ONLINE: Stars2 and GMP: Japanese launch satellite duo - SPIEGEL ONLINE , accessed on Saturday, March 1, 2014
- ↑ a b NASA: GPM Spacecraft and Instruments , accessed on Monday, March 3, 2014