NASDA’s ADEOS-II environmental monitoring satellite (Advanced Earth Observing
Satellite II) is scheduled to lift off from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan atop a Japanese H-IIA launcher on 14 December 2002 at 1.31 a.m. GMT.
ADEOS-II is the follow-on to ADEOS-I and will continue to collect data on the Earth’s water, energy and carbon cycles. These data will be used to study climate change and for such applications as meteorology and fisheries. The ADEOS-II payload comprises six instruments: NASDA’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) and Global Imager (GLI), NASA/JPL’s SeaWinds scatterometer, the Japanese Environment Ministry’s Improved Limb Atmospheric Spectrometer (ILAS-II), CNES’s POlarization and Directionality of the Earth’s Reflectance (POLDER 2) and the Argos-Next data collection instrument developed jointly by NASDA and CNES.
POLDER 2 on ADEOS-II is the latest programme to result from continuing French-Japanese cooperation in Earth observation that began with the launch of the first POLDER instrument on ADEOS-I in 1996.
The POLDER 2 system comprises a spaceborne optical instrument and a ground segment, both developed by CNES as prime contractor. The international scientific community will use POLDER 2 data to study the interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation in the light of rising greenhouse emissions, to determine certain physical and optical properties of aerosols, study the aerosol cycle in the troposphere and gain a closer understanding of the role of marine phytoplankton and the continental biosphere in the carbon cycle. These new data, which will complement those obtained by POLDER 1 on ADEOS-I, are going to prove crucial in particular to the study of long-term climate change.
The new Argos/ADEOS-II programme, dubbed Argos-Next, was decided by NASDA and CNES to enable CNES to conduct in-flight validation of Argos enhancements under development and to bring NASDA on board as a third partner in what was previously a bilateral programme managed jointly with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Sharing of development tasks between NASDA and the roles of CNES and CLS in managing operations and interfacing with users were defined in 1994, and the two agencies subsequently signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August 1996.
The new Argos-Next mission, which will complement and ensure continuity with the Argos-2 mission, is set to offer a new downlink service at the start of 2003 that will allow users to send messages to their mobile terminals. This new service gives a foretaste of the third-generation Argos system scheduled to fly starting in 2005 on the European METOP and US TIROS series of satellites, and in future on the NPOESS satellites.
ADEOS-II post-launch operations after 14 December will be controlled by NASDA from its Tsukuba control centre, working closely with the POLDER 2 and Argos-Next ground segments at the Toulouse Space Centre in France and CNES subsidiary CLS in Tokyo and Toulouse, which will be responsible for monitoring and programming the two instruments and processing data.
Cooperation between CNES and NASDA began in the 1980s and has been gathering momentum ever since. In November 1996, ties were further strengthened when the two agencies signed an understanding in Tokyo at a ceremony attended by the Japanese Prime Minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, and the French President, Jacques Chirac. This accord was the result of a shared political commitment to step up exchanges between the two nations by exploiting complementary expertise and converging approaches, particularly in Earth observation and natural disaster management.
Today, cooperation is being extended to other areas including space transport and radiocommunications. The fourth French-Japanese space symposium, due to be held in Kyoto from 14 to 16 May 2003, will provide an opportunity to give fresh impetus to current actions and launch new cooperation projects at technical, scientific and industrial level.
Press contacts :
CNES
Eliane Moreaux :
Phone +33 (0)5.61.27.33.44 – Fax +33 (0)5.61.28.21.47 e-mail: eliane.moreaux@cnes.fr
CNES office in Japan
Norbert Paluch
Science and Technology Service
French Embassy in Japan
4-11-44 Minami Azabu
Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-8514
JAPAN
Phone 81-3-5420-8934 – Fax 81-3-5420-8920
e-mail: paluch@rosenet.ne.jp
For the latest news, go to:
http://h2a.nasda.go.jp/daily/200212/f4-20021202_e.html
Find out more about the instruments’ missions at:
POLDER 2 on ADEOS-II
POLDER 2 on ADEOS-II is the latest programme to result from continuing French-Japanese cooperation in Earth observation that began with the launch of the first POLDER instrument on ADEOS-I in 1996.
The POLDER 2 system (POLarization and Directionality of the Earth’s Reflectance) comprises a spaceborne instrument and a ground segment, both developed by CNES as prime contractor.
The international scientific community will use POLDER 2 data to study the interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation in the light of rising greenhouse emissions, to determine certain physical and optical properties of aerosols, study the aerosol cycle in the troposphere and gain a closer understanding of the role of marine phytoplankton and the continental biosphere in the carbon cycle. These new data, which will complement those obtained by POLDER 1 on ADEOS-I, are going to prove crucial to the study of long-term climate change.
POLDER 2 is a wide-field imaging radiometer/polarimeter and one of the six instruments to be flown on NASDA’s ADEOS-II satellite, scheduled for launch from the Tanegashima Space Centre in mid-December 2002. POLDER 2 will measure visible radiation reflected by clouds, aerosols, oceans and land surfaces across the globe.
Six years after its predecessor, POLDER 2 is still the only satellite-borne instrument able to observe both the polarization and the directional and multispectral signatures of reflected radiation—unique capabilities that make the POLDER concept truly innovative to this day. The new information gleaned by POLDER will improve accuracy of corrections for directional and atmospheric effects and support development of new methods for mapping the features of observed areas. It will also be used to measure cloud altitude and water vapour content using differential absorption techniques.
Teams at the POLDER 2 ground segment, located at CNES in Toulouse, will be responsible for programming the instrument and for operational processing and distribution of data acquired daily. This new-generation ground segment offers improved performance and was designed to process and distribute new products based on advanced scientific algorithms developed by CNES in collaboration with CEA/LSCE and LOA.
POLDER 2 level 1 data will be routinely available from six months after launch, once CNES teams have validated the quality of images from the instrument using innovative ground-based measurement techniques. These data will be used to derive a range of geophysical products distributed initially to selected researchers. To validate these products, CNES, in collaboration with the French atomic energy agency CEA and research laboratories involved in the programme, will use auxiliary data from a network of ground-based photometers, ocean data (in-situ chlorophyll measurements), comparative data from other space-based sensors and various climatic and meteorological models.
At the end of the validation phase, expected to be complete by early 2004, geophysical products will be made available to the broader scientific user community. The POLDER international science working group, made up of around 100 scientists involved in the programme, will continue to meet regularly to present and discuss the results obtained by user teams.
1 LSCE climate and environmental science laboratory, attached to the French atomic energy agency CEA, part of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace.
2 LOA atmospheric optics laboratory, based at the University of Lille.
ARGOS NEXT ON ADEOS II
As early as December 1993, NASDA and CNES agreed to fly an enhanced Argos* instrument on Japan’s ADEOS-II environmental monitoring satellite. Through this agreement, CNES would be able to conduct in-flight validation of Argos enhancements under development and bring NASDA on board as a third partner in what had previously been a bilateral programme managed jointly with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
CNES and NASDA pursued their talks the following year and on 30 November 1994 reached a first formal agreement on a basic framework for cooperation. This new agreement defined task sharing on the space and ground segments, and confirmed the roles of CNES and CLS in managing operations and interfacing with users. The two agencies subsequently signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August 1996.
The new Argos/ADEOS-II programme, dubbed Argos-Next, was now ready to begin. NASDA and CNES would develop the new instrument jointly and CLS would set up a regional processing and distribution centre in Japan.
The new Argos-Next mission, which will complement and ensure continuity with the Argos-2 mission, is set to offer a new downlink service at the start of 2003. This service will allow users to send messages to their mobile terminals and will also support secure message transmissions, giving a foretaste of the third-generation Argos system scheduled to fly starting in 2005.
These general objectives have been translated into a series of specific requirements for the Argos-Next project. These requirements are:
* Enhance Argos system performance in terms of latency and data collection capacity by adding a payload on ADEOS-II that will be fully compatible with Argos-2. This operational payload will provide extra redundancy.
* Collect data from new terminals capable of sending five to ten times more data than the current generation of transmitters.
* Offer a new service to allow users to downlink short messages to Argos platforms equipped with appropriate receivers. Message length will be adjustable according to needs.
* Set up a ground segment in Japan and integrate it in the existing CNES/NOAA network. This ground segment will:
* receive data from ADEOS-II, extract Argos-Next data and send them to the CLS processing centre in Japan (under NASDA responsibility);
* process and distribute Argos-Next data and exchange collected data with the processing centre in Toulouse, France (under CNES and CLS responsibility).
* Set up a system to exploit the downlink capability at the Downlink Message Management Centre (DMMC) based at the Argos processing centre in Toulouse.
CLS’s regional processing and distribution centre in Japan is now up and running and the interfaces with NASDA’s processing centre in Hatoyama have been validated. The receivers for the new satellite/platform downlink are ready.
*Argos is a data collection and location system that has been operating since 1978. Although best known to the general public for assisting skippers during ocean yacht races, Argos is dedicated above all to studying and protecting the environment and to scientific research.
