Wed, Feb 21, 2018
Spacecraft Has Now Arrived In Toulouse For Final Checks
Aeolus, the European Space Agency’s wind sensing satellite, has left Liège in Belgium having successfully completed an extensive thermal and functional performance test campaign under in-orbit conditions. It will now undergo final checks at InteSpace test center in Toulouse, France, before being shipped to French Guiana in the summer ready for launch on a Vega launcher.
The 1.4-metric ton spacecraft, primed by Airbus, features the LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) instrument called Aladin, which uses the Doppler effect to determine the wind speed at varying altitudes.
Aladin fires a powerful ultraviolet laser pulse down through the atmosphere and collects backscattered light, using a large 1.5 meter (5 foot) diameter telescope, which is then analysed on-board by highly sensitive receivers to determine the Doppler shift of the signal from layers at different heights in the atmosphere.
The data from Aeolus will provide reliable wind-profile data on a global scale and is needed by meteorologists to further improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and by climatologists to better understand the global dynamics of Earth’s atmosphere.
Aeolus will orbit the Earth 15 times a day with data delivery to users within 120 minutes of the oldest measurement in each orbit. The orbit repeat cycle is 7 days (every 111 orbits) and the spacecraft will fly in a 320 km (200 mile) orbit and have a lifetime of three years.
(Image provided with Airbus news release)
More News
Get The Latest in Aviation News NOW on Instagram Are you on Instagram yet? It's been around for a few years, quietly picking up traction mostly thanks to everybody's new obsession >[...]
"From the end of April, our team embarked on a groundbreaking endeavor to help make cleanup efforts on Everest safer and more efficient. We are thrilled to share that our DJI FlyCa>[...]
Obstacle An existing object, object of natural growth, or terrain at a fixed geographical location or which may be expected at a fixed location within a prescribed area with refere>[...]
Aero Linx: Helicopter Association of Canada (HAC) Mandate: 1) To promote a political and regulatory environment that will foster a prosperous Canadian Helicopter industry; 2) To ed>[...]
Also: Hubble On Pause, FedEx Pilots Picket, Nexus eVTOL, VFS Honors The Rotax folks have published a Service Bulletin after issues were noted that may affect all R915i and R916i se>[...]