A UK-built advanced European Space Agency
climate satellite will move a step closer to launch this week when it is
shipped to France for final testing.
Developed in Stevenage by Airbus Defence and
Space, the Aeolus satellite will be used to measure wind speeds at multiple
levels in the Earth’s atmosphere and is expected to lead to significant
improvements in numerical weather forecasts.
The main payload on the 1.7-tonne spacecraft, which will be
launched on a Vega rocket towards the end of 2017, is a LIDAR (Light Detection
And Ranging) instrument called Aladin, which uses the Doppler effect to
determine the wind speed at varying altitudes.
Designed
by Airbus Defence and Space engineers in France, Aladin – which has been
described by ESA as one of the trickiest pieces of space technology ever
developed – will be the first wind lidar to be used in space.
Incorporating two powerful lasers, a large telescope and extremely
sensitive receivers, the system will work by firing a powerful ultraviolet
laser pulse down through the atmosphere and collecting the backscattered light
using the 1.5m diameter telescope. This will then be analysed on-board by
highly sensitive receivers to determine the Doppler shift of the signal from
layers at different heights in the atmosphere.
The
near-realtime data collected by the satellite will provide reliable
wind-profile data on a global scale and help meteorologists improve the
accuracy of weather forecasts.
Commenting
on the spacecraft’s capabilities Beth Greenaway, head of Earth Observation at
the UK Space Agency, said: ”These observations will advance our understanding
of tropical dynamics and processes relevant to climate variability. Accurate
wind forecasts are also vital for commercial undertakings such as farming,
fishing, construction and transport.”
Aeolus
will fly in a 320km orbit and have a lifetime of three years
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