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El nuevo satélite meteorológico europeo MetOp alcanza la órbita polar   MetOp-A was launched on 19 October 2006 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.  MetOp-A has been launched on a Soyuz/ST Fregat rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Once close to its orbital altitude, the spacecraft is orientated by the Fregat upper-stage to ensure that it is in a circular orbit. The Fregat is then released leaving the MetOp satellite in its polar orbit 800 km above the surface of the Earth.  MetOp-A will be launched on a Soyuz/ST Fregat rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Once MetOp has reached its orbital altitude of 800 km above the surface of the Earth and in the correct position, the solar array, which is on the zenith side of the satellite, is gently deployed to face the Sun. This procedure takes up to 17 minutes and happens in two stages. Initially, the solar array arm rotates 120° up and over. Then, the large eight-section panel opens out.  As solar radiation reaches the Earth's atmosphere and surface a certain percentage is reflected or backscattered out to space. The degree to which incident light is backscattered depends on the albedo of the surface the light encounters, for example, clouds in the atmosphere have a high albedo so a large proportion of sunlight is reflected back.
GOME-2 is able determine amounts of certain gases present in the atmosphere through the principles of spectrometry, where, in incoming light is split into its spectral components to reveal absorption lines, which correspond to the various gases present the observed sample.  From MetOp's polar orbit, the IASI instrument observes the Earth up to an angle of 48.5° perpendicular to both sides of the satellite track corresponding to a swath of about 2 000 kilometres on the ground. Each sample is made up of four circular pixels with a maximum diameter of 12 kilometres at nadir. One swathe achieves 30 equally spaced Earth views (and two calibration views). The incoming radiation is measured in three spectral bands. Band one (15.5 to 8.26 microns) contributes mainly to retrievals of temperature profiles and ozone, band two (8.26 to 5 microns) contributes to retrievals of humidity and some trace gases and band three (5 to 3.62) contributes to retrievals of temperature and some trace gases. MetOp-A was launched on 19 October 2006 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz ST rocket with a Fregat upper stage. Un gran avance en la predicción meteorológica  MetOp will be monitored and controlled via the EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) Command and Data Acquisition station in Svalbard, Norway. Data will be downlinked to Svalbard once per orbit and then transferred to EUMETSAT in Darmstadt, Germany. From here, there is a data exchange with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the USA, and then after processing, the data is distributed to the users within 2 hours 15 minutes of the observations being made in space. MetOp forms the European contribution to the joint European-American polar satellite system. Through this international partnership, MetOp will provide the morning coverage while the NOAA satellites cover the afternoon orbits. Data is processed by both EUMETSAT and NOAA.  The SvalSat Station on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard  Release date: 23 noviembre 2006 |