The ROC National Space Organization announced May 16 it has recently developed a unique procedure to extend the life of batteries powering satellite FORMOSAT-3, the first microsatellite constellation designed to observe the earth’s atmosphere through global positioning system radio occultation.
The system has been called “the most accurate earth thermometer in space.”
The satellite network is capable of taking temperature measurements over oceans, high mountains, deserts and arctic wastes that are inaccessible to land-based measurement, the NSPO’s parent organization National Applied Research Laboratories said in a press release.
The data collected can be used to give much more accurate forecasts of temperatures in the middle and upper reaches of the atmosphere, and will also prove useful to research on climate change and global warming, NARL said.
Since its launch in 2006, FORMOSAT-3 has collected more than 7 million atmospheric and ionospheric profiles, which have been made available to more than 2,100 researchers in 67 countries for use in weather reports, and research into climate change and the upper atmosphere, among other uses.
The data provided by the system can be used to modify satellite positioning error by up to 4 percent, equivalent to a height correction of up to 12 centimeters and level correction of up to 10 meters. This has applications in such fields as telecommunications, positioning and navigation, NARL said.
Because storms in the outer atmosphere can produce sudden changes in the strength of ionospheric radio waves and transmission pathways, NSPO researchers have also produced the world’s first global scintillation index empirical model, which can give early warning of the occurrence of such events, NARL said. (SDH)
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