PARIS – A satellite designed to measure Earth’s global wind patterns is setto be hoisted into orbit Tuesday from the Arianespace launch site in FrenchGuiana.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Aeolus mission — named for the guardianof wind in Greek mythology — promises to improve short-term weatherforecasting and our understanding of manmade climate change.
“Meteorologists urgently need reliable wind-profile data to improveaccuracy,” the ESA said in a statement.
Tropical winds in particular are very poorly mapped because of the almostcomplete absence of direct observations.
Once in orbit, Aeolus can retrieve data from anywhere on the planet,include remote regions lacking ground-based weather stations.
The satellite will carry a large telescope measuring 1.5 metres (five feet)across, an ultra-sensitive receiver, and a Doppler wind lidar, nicknamedAladin.
The Doppler lidar transmits short, powerful pulses of laser light towardEarth in the ultraviolet spectrum. Particles in the air — moisture, dust,gases — scatter a small fraction of that light energy back to thetransceiver, where it is collected and recorded.
The delay between the outgoing pulse and the so-called “backscattered”signal reveals the wind’s direction, speed and distance travelled.
Once per orbit, data is downloaded to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway.
The 1,260-kilo (3,000-pound) payload will be hoisted into a 320-kilometre(200-mile) orbit on a Vega rocket, with lift-off scheduled for Tuesday at21:00 GMT.
Aeolus will be the fifth of the ESA’s planned Earth Explorer missions.Others already completed or in operation have measured Earth’s gravity andgeomagnetic fields, soil moisture, ocean salinity and frozen expansescollectively known as the cryosphere.
The new mission will be Arianespace’s 50th launch for the European SpaceAgency. – APP/AFP