Aeolus preparing to fly the wind mission

https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Aeolus_preparing_to_fly_the_wind_mission

by based2 • 8 years ago

47 7 8 years ago

botverse• 8 years ago

Not mentioned in the article. Will be orbiting at 320 km from the surface of the earth, for comparison ISS is between 403 and 406 km.

Edit, Orbital times:

Aeolus 60 minutes

ISS 92.49 minutes

wereHamster• 8 years ago

… which means its lifetime is rather limited. It can carry only so much propellant for orbital station-keeping.

tyldum• 8 years ago

Designed to last 3 years. Previous low orbiting missions like GOCE demonstrated that the drag was less than expected so I would not be surprised if it went beyond 3 years.

elil17• 8 years ago

Though they don’t get the same hype as space missions that face outward, ESAs earth observing satellites are super exciting. The data is open, and people come up with things to do with it the mission designers never imagened. Sentinel-2, for instance, was supposed to track things like icebergs, but people have also used the data to detect buildings with unstable foundations by measuring small changes in the orientation of their roofs. I’m curious to see all the un-thought-of uses Aeolus will be used for!

calebsurfs• 8 years ago

This looks a lot more sophisticated than currently operating satellite wind mapping, which uses radar deflection off water to estimate wind speed and direction. I hope they make data as easily available as noaa:

https://manati.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/datasets/ASCATData.php

gns24• 8 years ago

I had never heard of a sun-synchronous orbit before. Intuitively it shouldn't work; if you're orbiting the earth in a plane perpendicular to the sun now, then in three months' time you'd expect to have moved round and the sun to be in that plane.

However, it turns out that the orbital plane can be made to precess by means of interaction with the earth's equatorial bulge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit#Orbital_...

Aeolus preparing to fly the wind mission

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