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26.10.2018 07:30 Age: 5 yrs

CFOSAT: D-4 before the launch !

Category: News of the CFOsat mission

The French-Chinese CFOSAT satellite takes off next Monday from the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in China.

The launch countdown is becoming clear at the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in China, with the Long March 2C rocket preparing for liftoff. Next Monday, 29th October 2018, the CFOSAT satellite will reach its sun-synchronous orbit at 520 km altitude.

CFOSAT studies ocean surface winds and waves with a view to improving sea-state forecasts and gaining new insights into ocean-atmosphere interactions.

Calibration/Validation and data processing after the launch

After about one month during the Commissioning Phase, the data will be available for scientific expert during the Calibration/Validation phase (represented in France by LATMOS, LOPS and marine forecasters and oceanographers at Météo-France). After 6-7 months, the data will be accessible to the entire scientific community. 

Chinese or French, each mission centre generates user products through two processing chains : one for SWIM data, the other for SCAT data. Each country designed and developed the scientific algorithms for its own intrument, capable of extracting physical values from the raw telemetry. Each then delivered its processing chain to the other partner for integration into the latter's operational mission centre.

The French Mission Centre supplies weather agencies with Level-1 and Level-2 products for marine weather forecasts in less than  3 hours. For other applications, France and China offer Level-3 and Level-4 value-added products.

These will be developed over longer timescales and incorporate external data, for use in research into subjects as ocean/atmosphere exchanges.

Thematic posters of CFOSAT. Credits CNES, CNSA. All posters on this page.

Further information: 

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