U s air force defense meteorological satellite program

Go live. Record screen. Menu Search. Features Create. Resources Learn. More stuff. Please enable JavaScript to experience Vimeo in all of its glory. The frequencies chosen channels and 24 provide near uniform coverage in height to about 32 km. With the addition of five more channels channels , the temperature retrievals are extended up to about 80 km.

The antenna has a diameter of 61 cm, the beam width is in the range: 0. Upwelling radiance is focussed onto an up-looking feedhorn array which is fixed relative to the main reflector. Determine 15 temperatures from millibars; determine 14 thickness between levels. Humidity profiles specific and relative humidity at six levels and total water vapor mass and water between specific pressure levels. Specific humidity 1. The scene spacing for the sounder channels has been improved from km to km of the earlier instruments to 50 km for the lower atmosphere and to 75 km altitude for the upper atmosphere measurements.

The frequency of 85 GHz was changed to 91 GHz to save an extra channel in the system. The sounding data is only partially smoothed onboard. The GHz channels are downlinked at The Instrument calibration: SSMIS employs a two point hot and cold load calibration taken once during each scan of 1. The six separate feed horns for each frequency require the flight software in the sensor to align the data prior to transmission to the ground via OLS.

CoSMIR has nine channels at the frequencies of All except the two Three of the aircraft flights passed over Lakes Pyramid and Tahoe that could be used to validate the in-flight sensor calibration.

The optical instrument is a spectrograph with the objective to measure extreme and far ultraviolet radiation vertical profiles from the Earth's limb. The vertical profiles in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere are obtained by viewing the Earth's limb at a tangent altitude of approximately 50 km to km. The sensor consists of a folded telescope, a scan mirror assembly with a mounting interface to the UV Wadsworth spectrograph, the collimator, a grating element focuses the radiation onto the detector and disperses the light into a spectrum from 80 - nm , a detector imaging microplate detector with a wedge and strip anode that characterizes photon events , control electronics to operate the scan mirror assembly, etc.

A scanning mirror sweeps the FOV across the Earth limb to obtain vertical profiles of the natural airglow radiation from atoms, molecules and ions in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The scan is performed in the orbital plane, looking either forward or aft. The scan rate is faster at high tangent altitudes and slows down at lower altitudes where there is more structure in the airglow. The intensity at these wavelengths is so low, both sensors count individual photons on the focal plane using wedge and strip microchannel plate detector technology.

The radiation is dispersed off a grating into its spectral elements, focused onto a detector, and converted into an electrical signal. The SSULI electronics use this charge to determine the wavelength and amplitude of the photons striking the detector. SSUSI is a nadir-pointing instrument that measures UV radiation from the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere, it also measures visible radiation airglow and terrestrial albedo.

The instrument provides the 5D-3 satellite series with the ability to obtain photometric observations of the nightglow and nightside aurora. SIS in turn consists of a cross-track scanning mirror at the input to the telescope folded design and spectrograph optics. There are redundant 2-D photon-counting detectors at the focal plane detector size: 16 pixels in along-track and pixels in the cross-track direction.

The detectors employ a position sensitive anode to determine the photon event location. The scan mirror sweeps the 16 pixel footprint from horizon to horizon, producing one frame in 22 seconds. The imaging mode performs simultaneous measurements in five wavelength bands from - nm.

The imaging mode scan cycle consists of a limb-viewing section followed by an Earth viewing nadir section. Limb-viewing imagery is collected from The limb-viewing section has a cross-track resolution of 0. The Earth-viewing section has a cross-track resolution of 0.

Spatial resolution at nadir cross-track, along-track. Spectral resolution nm Narrow, slit, normal slit, wide slit. Spatial pixels per frame Limb cross-track, along-track Earth cross-track, along-track. NPS consists of three nadir-looking photometers. It operates in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, monitoring airglow at NPS operates only on the nightside of the orbit.

Its data determine the auroral oval location and provide information to help determine electron densities in the F-layer, energy deposition in the auroral region day and night , photoelectrons, neutral composition, and equatorial electrojet.

Each photometer unit includes an integrated detector package consisting of a photomultiplier tube, high voltage power supply, and pulse amplitude discriminator electronics. Table NPS performance parameters. The SESS sensors provide data on the geophysical environment of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Measurement of the ambient electron density and temperatures, the ambient ion density, and the average ion temperature and molecular weight at the DMSP orbital altitude.

The ion sensor is a planar aperture, planar collector sensor oriented to face the spacecraft velocity vector at all times. Objective: Measurement of transfer energy, mass, and momentum of charged particles through the magnetosphere-ionosphere in the Earth's magnetic field. The instrument looks toward the satellite zenith.

The curved plate detectors allow precipitating electrons and ions to enter through an aperture of about 20 x 10 FWHM. Electrons and ions of the selected energy are deflected toward the target by an imposed electric field applied across the two plates.

The two low energy detectors consist of 10 channels centered at 34, 49, 71, , , , , , , and eV. The high energy detector measures particles in 10 channels centered at 1. Each detector integrates each channel for 0.

A complete cycle is sampled each second. The primary sources of the particles precipitating into the upper atmosphere are the northern and southern auroral zones. The daily data volume is approximately 1 Mbyte per satellite. The sensor data also supports missions which require knowledge of the polar and high-latitude ionosphere, such as communications, surveillance, and detection systems that propagate energy off or through the ionosphere.

The instrument is an electrostatic analyzer detector developed and built by Amptek Inc. Detects and analyzes electrons and ions that precipitate in the ionosphere to produce an aurora display 0. It utilizes a space qualified microprocessor that permits customizing data rates, measurement ranges, on board storage, and specific analysis algorithms, such as auroral boundary detection or real time charging measurements.

The SSM measures geomagnetic fluctuations associated with solar geophysical phenomena i. Only 10 readings of the 12 readings per second are reported for the X axis due to telemetry limitations. The SSM's axes are aligned with the spacecraft's axes where X is downward and aligned to local vertical within 0. The first SSM flight started with F12 launch Note: The magnetic field has three sources: 1 the magnetic field from the solid Earth, 2 the magnetic field from electrical currents flowing in the ionosphere and magnetosphere, and 3 the magnetic field from the spacecraft.

Measurement of source 2 is the principal objective of the SSM, the measurement of source 1 is a secondary objective, and measurement of source 3 is a nuisance which is eliminated from the data as much as possible during data processing.

Measures geomagnetic fluctuations associated with solar geophysical phenomena i. The instrument is an operational static Earth viewing laser threat warning sensor.

Ground segment:. It is charged with supporting launch, early orbit, and day to day operations. The C3S is made up of many geographically separated elements, linked by communications networks. These data are prepared from a global, digital intensity file used operationally by the Air Force in forecasting and are subsequently archived at NGDC [DMSP imagery are archived after operational use usually 45 to 60 days ].

Archival services are continually upgraded. The imagery collection consists of three positive transparency products produced by USAF. Mosaics are the only pre-gridded product available.

Single-orbit strips can be custom gridded for an additional fee. Each of these products has been produced since , except the mosaics, which were available from December on. It's primary objective is to provide significantly improved temperature soundings compared to its predecessor MSU. Ice: area covered Ice: age Ice: edge location.

IR yes 8 bit VIS no continued gain adjustment. Early history of the DMSP program:. Successful operation of overhead photoreconnaissance satellites, the RAND Corporation had warned the Air Force in the mid s,1 depended on accurate and timely meteorological forecasts of the Sino-Soviet landmass. Such forecasts would make possible cloud-free photography over areas of interest. Indeed, pictures of clouds retrieved from a film-limited spacecraft cost dearly—a fact made plain in by the images returned from early Corona missions.

NOMSS, at best two or three years away, also was supposed to support international meteorological data exchanges, an objective inconsistent with contemporary NRP requirements for secrecy. Charyk knew that NASA officials did not believe a spin-stabilized weather satellite that would keep its spin axis perpendicular to its orbit plane could be developed soon—and certainly not inexpensively and in time to furnish strategic meteorological forecasts for reconnaissance satellite flight operations in On July 27, , Lt.

Colonel Thomas O. In order to avoid confusion, the current designation DMSP is used throughout this history. All spacecraft launched have had a tactical direct readout and a strategic stored data capacity.

The USAF maintained an operational constellation of two near-polar, sun-synchronous satellites. The DMSP mission was to provide global visible and infrared cloud data and other specialized meteorological, oceanographic and solar-geophysical data in support of world wide Department of Defense DoD operations. The early DoD weather program began with first launches in with a spin-stabilized satellite of 90 kg mass equipped with a shutter-style TV camera a top secret classified program at the time.

Various code names were used for the entire program such as Program 2, Program BH, and Program Another launch of Program 35 took place on Feb. The various spacecraft identified in the P35 series were grouped in generations known as 'Blocks'. Blocks 1 and 2 must be considered as experimental satellites.

All the successful satellites in the P35 series were placed into a sun-synchronous orbit. This was the first time ever that a sun-synchronous orbit was demonstrated. Spacecraft of this series, built by RCA Radio Corporation of America , were of the shape of a spin-stabilized octagon 76 cm in diameter and 74 cm high with a mass of about 80 kg.

The payload consisted of two vidicon cameras for collecting high-resolution TV pictures resolution: 1. From these, better sensors emerged with first attempts to combine reflected and emitted energy for the cloud analysis problem.

The Block 4 vehicles carried two 2. The resolution varied from 1. Besides a multi-sensor infrared subsystem, Block 4 also incorporated a high-resolution radiometer that furnished cloud-height profiles.

A tape recorder of increased capacity stored pictures of the entire northern hemisphere each day, while the satellite furnished real-time, direct local tactical weather coverage to small mobile ground or shipboard terminals. Under the guidance of a new program director Major John E. Raytheon says its system will improve upon the legacy system by providing greater detail and resolution. The company completed preliminary design reviews in January and is working toward a final design review as well as a downselect in January Raytheon says it can deliver a system ready for launch by By Nathan Strout.

Dec 17, Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The U. Films are well suited for the study of weather, and users of such films have derived much useful data. For many potential remote sensing applications, however, a quantitative measurement of the brightness of the imaged light patterns is needed, and it cannot be extracted with adequte accuracy from the films.

Such information is contained in the telemetry from the spacecraft and is retained on digital tapes, which store the images for a few days while they await filming. For practical reasons, it has not heretofore been feasible for the Air Force to provide a remote-sensing user with these digital data, and the quantitative brightness information has been lost with the erasure of tapes for re-use. For the purpose of evaluation of tapes as a means for remote sensing, the Air Force recently did provide to the author six examples containing records of nighttime DMSP imagery similar to that which has previously 1 been evaluated by SRI International in a film format.