CFOSat

 

The Chinese (CNSA) and French (Cnes) Space Agencies jointly plan a satellite mission devoted to the monitoring of the ocean surface wind and wave, and related ocean and atmospheric science and applications: CFOSAT project (Chinese-French Oceanic SATellite).

The CFOSAT embark two main instruments:  the french radar SWIM (Surface Wave Investigation and Monitoring) to determine the direction, amplitude and wavelength of surface waves and the chinese scatterometer SCAT to measure wind speed. 

The ground segment is shared between chinese (Mission and Control centers) and french centers (Instrument mission center and waves and wind mission center).

Satellite  CFOSAT
Launch on  29/10/2018
End Date 
Altitude  ~500
Inclination  97°
Repetitivity 
Agency  Cnes-CNSA
Goals  Measure sea state (wind/wave)
Link 


All information about:

Recommendations to CFOSAT users on publication policy:

The first scientific publications on CFOSAT data will be authored by members who participated to the verification and CAL/VAL phase since the satellite launch. Two papers, one on SWIM and one on SCAT have been pubished:

  • Hauser D. et al., "New Observations From the SWIM Radar On-Board CFOSAT: Instrument Validation and Ocean Wave Measurement Assessment," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 5-26, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2020.2994372.
  • Liu J. et al., "First Results From the Rotating Fan Beam Scatterometer Onboard CFOSAT," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 58, no. 12, pp. 8793-8806, Dec. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2020.2990708.


It is recommended that all further publications based on CFOSAT data cite one of these first two publications (depending on whether they deal with SCAT or SWIM). The publications co-authored by several members and groups of the Joint Science Team is firmly encouraged.

All the publications and communications based on CFOSAT data have to be forwarded to CNSA and CNES (send to aviso@altimetry.fr who will transmit) and they all have to acknowledge CNSA and CNES as having ownership of the CFOSAT science products. The acknowledgement sentence is: “All CFOSAT data are provided by courtesy of CNSA and CNES [under science proposals XXX. (XXX=proposal id)]."