Envisat Team |
Kiruna`s facilities |
First Envisat health check results: from space to screen
The Earth's major new health check began just after midnight
on 1 March 2002, when Envisat - Europe's highly sophisticated
global monitoring satellite - was launched by an Ariane 5 launcher
from Europe's spaceport, French Guiana.
After its successful launch Envisat is now getting ready to
start observing the Earth over a planned five-year mission.
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Its information will come from a combination of 10 multi-disciplinary
instruments providing measurements of the atmosphere, ocean,
land and ice. Following launch, ESA's spacecraft controllers
at ESOC, Germany, spent the first half of March powering up
the satellite and the instruments onboard. This was known as
the "Switch On and Data Acquisition Phase". One by one, each
of the 10 instruments are being turned on and verified. |
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Global data is recorded onboard the satellite
and downlinked once per 100-minute orbit, when in range of
the Kiruna station located in North Sweden, for immediate
data pre-processing.
Fine processing of the data takes place at ESA's ESRIN research
facility in Frascati, Italy. Raw digital data is fed into
processors - software programs written specially for each
instrument - to be turned first into calibrated engineering
values and then into validated geophysical products.
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ESRIN - Data Processing
Room |
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Europe are working together at ESRIN on the generation of the
first images. Five European scientists specialized in the interpretation
of ASAR and MERIS data - Prof. Andre Morel (France), Dr Roland
Doerffer (Germany), Prof. Fabio Rocca (Italy), Prof. Johnny
Johannessen (Norway) were invited by ESA at Frascati to work
on the first results and help the ESA teams interpret the science
contents. |
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ESOC - control centre
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Prof. Helmut Rott (Austria) supported
the selection process from his laboratory in Innsbruck before
departing to Patagonia where he will study the retreat of glaciers
in-situ.
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Roland Doerffer of the GKSS Institute
for Coastal Research stated: "Just two days after the switch-on
of MERIS, the quality of the data is just outstanding. And all
of it has been of a similar standard, something which is very
important."
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Prof. Johannessen's is equally enthusiastic:" The advanced
capability of the new ASAR is already clearly demonstrated;
it offers a very wide coverage of 400 km, several new
operating modes and many more details can be captured
in one go. In addition it provides important continuity
to ERS data".
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ESOC - Ozone level control |
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Prof. Morel from the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie Marines
declared: "Before the complex processing which is to be made
in a second step - the first images quickly visualized through
simple processing reveal a lot of interesting oceanographic
features. Extremely detailed marine and land structures are
accurately depicted. This is extremely promising for the future
scientific exploitation of the data".
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ESRIN - PCS room
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ESA will unveil the initial results
of the Earth's first health check today at its establishment
in Frascati (Italy) - and online at the ESA Portal website.
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