Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo
This week we’re looking at either end of the life of a satellite. Firstly, an announcement from NOAA on plans to extend the mission of three of their satellites rather than decommissioning them, plus the latest launches from China.
Extending Satellite Mission Life
A couple of weeks ago we wrote about ESA switching CryoSat to its back-up fuel propulsion system in a bid to extend its mission life. A similar intention was announced by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this week with plans to extend the life of NOAA-15, NOAA-18, and NOAA-19, that were launched on 13th May 1998, 20th May 2005, and 6th February 2009 respectively.
These three satellites are part of NOAA’s Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite fleet collecting meteorological data. They all operate at an altitude of just over 800 km in a sun-synchronous orbit, and have a number of instruments including:
- Advanced Microwave Sounding Units for measuring temperature, humidity and precipitation in nearly-all-weather conditions.
- Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer collecting multispectral optical imagery across six spectral bands with a spatial resolution of just over a kilometre.
- High-resolution Infrared Sounder for measuring temperature and humidity.
- Microwave Humidity Sounding for measuring humidity – although this instrument is not onboard NOAA-15.
The three have been surpassed by NOAA’s next-generation Joint Polar Satellite Series (JPSS), but instead of decommissioning them NOAA hopes to use a POES Extended Life Internet cloud-based system to extend their life. The solution will use Microsoft Azure to control them using a Ground System as a Service (GSaaS) approach, which will extend their active life to at least September 2025 in a cost-effective way. It will also serve as a technology demonstrator for future Earth Observation (EO) missions. The GSaaS is being delivered under a commercial arrangement with a consortium led by US company Parsons Corporation from their facility in Colorado Springs.
New Satellite Launches
It feels like almost every week China new EO launches, and this week is no different! On Sunday, a trio were launched by the Long March 2D rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. These were the Yaogan 36-01A, -01B, and -01C, and are believed to be Chinese military satellites. There is, obviously, limited information known about them, but 01A and 01B are reported as optical imaging satellites built by the Aerospace Dongfanghong (DFH) Satellite Company in Beijing, while 01C could be a radar satellite built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
This launch was also noteworthy as it represented the 500th launch by one of the Long March rockets. Long March 1 launched its first satellite on the 24th April 1970 when Dongfanghong 1 was put into orbit. Since then there have been over 20 types of Long March rockets, and 16 of them are in active service. Long March 2D itself has been used in 85 flights and is generally used to put satellites into low-Earth or sun-synchronous orbits.
Summary
While EO satellites continue to get launched frequently, it is great to see new technology being used to extend the mission of existing satellites, and hopefully these innovations will help the sector move towards a more sustainable future.
